Young Guard Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev
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Title: Young Guard
Author: Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev
Year: 1943-45
Genre: Books about war, Literature of the 20th century, Soviet literature
About the book “Young Guard” Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev
There are probably no people who have not heard about the book “Young Guard,” which describes the feat of the Krasnodon underground organization during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War. Before writing this amazing novel, Alexander Fadeev visited the homeland of teenage partisans and learned all the details of this story.
Indeed, in Krasnodon there was a secret organization called the “Young Guard”, which was discovered and destroyed by the Germans in early 1943.
After the liberation of the city from the fascist invaders, several dozen corpses of young children, who were only 15-20 years old, were removed from mine No. 5, located nearby. In his work the writer left real names many heroes.
Reading the novel “The Young Guard” is very exciting - young guys, who have their whole lives ahead of them, doom themselves to mortal danger. Having united under the leadership of Oleg Koshevoy in an underground organization, they are trying their best to help their fathers and grandfathers who went to the front. Alexander Fadeev very clearly showed the self-government bodies and the entire structure of this organization - you are amazed at the responsibility and concentration of the Young Guards, the clear distribution of responsibilities, their loyalty to ideological principles, determination, enthusiasm and enormous faith in victory. A little later, the reader learns another side of the guys, which will give you goosebumps more than once - the tenacity of teenagers and their readiness to accept death in the name of saving their country, despite terrible torture, to which each of the captured heroes was subjected.
The “Young Guard” consisted not only of young men - there were also girls who worked equally with the boys. The iron endurance and strong spirit of all the heroes is amazing. There was also criticism within the organization. It is immediately clear that this is a close-knit team, where everyone else bears responsibility for each member.
For the first time, the book “Young Guard” was published immediately after the war, in 1946, when it was necessary to talk about the feat of teenagers and show strength and power true patriotism. This work is no less relevant today. First, we must always remember our heroes who gave their lives for our well-being.
Secondly, modern generation must learn from the Young Guards love for their homeland, the desire to fight for a better future, the ability to clearly see moral guidelines and follow them without hesitation.
“The Young Guard” is a book that tempers the soul. Alexander Fadeev immortalized the great feat of young fighters who significantly influenced the liberation of Krasnodon.
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Quotes from the book “Young Guard” Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev
Look around, too, young man, my friend, look around, like me, and tell me who you offended in life more than your mother - wasn’t it from me, wasn’t it from you, wasn’t it from him, wasn’t it from our failures, mistakes and Is it not because of our grief that our mothers turn gray? But the hour will come when all this will turn into a painful reproach to the heart at the mother’s grave.
Perhaps this was the most she could do in this conversation: to finally let him understand that their relationship was not an ordinary relationship, that there was a secret in this relationship.
Kayutkin spoke to Ulya so carefully, as if he were holding a light in his palms; his face was hard to see in the dark, but it was serious and soft, and there was no fatigue in his eyes - they sparkled in the dark.
But a person must have something sacred in his soul, something that, like his own mother, one cannot laugh at, speak disrespectfully, or mock.
And those who left felt so heavy, and confused, and painful in their souls, as if a raven was clawing at their souls.
Mom, mom!.. Forgive me, because you are alone, only you in the world can forgive, put your hands on your head, like in childhood, and forgive...
If you expect girls to come to you on their own, you are guaranteed a lonely old age!
Yes, this is happiness - standing still, not retreating, giving your life - believe my conscience, I myself would consider it happiness to give my life, to give my life for guys like you! - the major said with excitement shaking his light, dry body.
Forward, towards the dawn, comrades in the struggle!
We will pave the way for ourselves with bayonets and grapeshot...
So that labor becomes the ruler of the world
And he welded everyone into one family,
To battle, young guard of workers and peasants!
Song of Youth
© Fadeev A.A., heir, 2015
© Design. LLC Publishing House E, 2015
Chapter 1
- No, just look, Valya, what a miracle this is! Lovely... Like a statue - but from what wonderful material! After all, she is not marble, not alabaster, but alive, but how cold! And what a subtle, gentle work - human hands would never have been able to do that. Look how she rests on the water, pure, strict, indifferent... And this is her reflection in the water - it’s even difficult to say which one is more beautiful - and the colors? Look, look, it’s not white, that is, it’s white, but there are so many shades - yellowish, pinkish, some kind of heavenly, and inside, with this moisture, it’s pearly, simply dazzling - people have such colors and names No!..
So said, leaning out of a willow bush onto the river, a girl with black wavy braids, in a bright white blouse and with such beautiful, wet black eyes, opened from the sudden strong light gushing out of them, that she herself resembled this lily reflected in the dark water .
– I found time to admire! And you are wonderful, Ulya, by God! - another girl, Valya, answered her, following her, sticking out onto the river her slightly high-cheekboned and slightly snub-nosed, but very pretty face with its fresh youth and kindness. And, without looking at the lily, she restlessly looked along the shore for the girls they had strayed from. - Aw!..
“Come here!.. Ulya found a lily,” said Valya, looking lovingly and mockingly at her friend.
And at this time, again, like the echoes of distant thunder, the rolling of gun shots was heard - from there, from the north-west, from near Voroshilovgrad.
“Again...” Ulya repeated silently, and the light that poured out of her eyes with such force went out.
- Surely they will come in this time! My God! - Valya said. – Do you remember how worried you were last year? And everything worked out! But last year they didn't come that close. Do you hear how it thumps?
They paused and listened.
“When I hear this and see the sky, so clear, I see the branches of the trees, the grass under my feet, I feel how the sun warmed it, how delicious it smells, it hurts me so much, as if all this had already left me forever, forever,” Ulya spoke in a deep, worried voice. “The soul, it seems, has become so hardened by this war, you have already taught it not to allow anything into itself that can soften it, and suddenly such love, such pity for everything will break through!.. You know, I can only talk about this to you.” .
Their faces came so close among the foliage that their breath mingled, and they looked directly into each other’s eyes. Valya’s eyes were bright, kind, widely spaced, they met her friend’s gaze with humility and adoration. And Uli had big, dark brown eyes - not eyes, but eyes, with long eyelashes, milky whites, black mysterious pupils, from the very depths of which, it seemed, this moist strong light again flowed.
The distant, echoing rumbles of gun salvos, even here, in the lowlands near the river, echoing with a slight trembling of the foliage, were each time reflected as a restless shadow on the faces of the girls. But all their spiritual strength was devoted to what they were talking about.
– Do you remember how good it was yesterday evening in the steppe, remember? – Ulya asked, lowering her voice.
“I remember,” Valya whispered. - This sunset. Do you remember?
- Yes, yes... You know, everyone scolds our steppe, they say it’s boring, red, hills and hills, as if it’s homeless, but I love it. I remember when my mother was still healthy, she was working on the tower, and I, still very small, was lying on my back and looking high, high, thinking, how high can I look into the sky, you know, to the very heights? And yesterday it hurt me so much when we looked at the sunset, and then at these wet horses, guns, carts, and the wounded... The Red Army soldiers are walking so exhausted, covered in dust. I suddenly realized with such force that this was not a regrouping at all, but a terrible, yes, just terrible, retreat. That's why they are afraid to look you in the eye. Did you notice?
Valya silently nodded her head.
“I looked at the steppe, where we sang so many songs, and at this sunset, and I could barely hold back my tears. Have you often seen me cry? Do you remember when it started to get dark?.. They keep walking, walking in the twilight, and all the time there is this hum, flashes on the horizon and a glow - it must be in Rovenki - and the sunset is so heavy, crimson. You know, I’m not afraid of anything in the world, I’m not afraid of any struggle, difficulty, torment, but if I knew what to do... something menacing hung over our souls,” said Ulya, and a gloomy, dim fire gilded her eyes.
– But we lived so well, didn’t we, Ulechka? – Valya said with tears welling up in her eyes.
- How well all the people in the world could live, if they only wanted, if only they understood! - said Ulya. - But what to do, what to do! – she said in a completely different, childish voice, and a mischievous expression sparkled in her eyes.
She quickly kicked off the shoes she was wearing on her bare feet, and, grabbing the hem of her dark skirt into her narrow tanned skin, boldly entered the water.
“Girls, lily!..” exclaimed a thin and flexible girl with boyish desperate eyes who jumped out of the bushes. - No, my dear! – she squealed and, with a sharp movement, grabbing her skirt with both hands, flashing her dark bare feet, she jumped into the water, dousing both herself and Ulya with a fan of amber splashes. - Oh, it’s deep here! – she said with a laugh, sinking one foot into the seaweed and backing away.
The girls - there were six more of them - poured out onto the shore with noisy talk. All of them, like Ulya, and Valya, and the thin girl Sasha, who had just jumped into the water, were in short skirts, in simple sweaters. Donetsk hot winds and scorching sun, as if on purpose to shade physical nature Each of the girls, one was gilded, another was darkened, and another was calcined, as in a fiery font, arms and legs, face and neck to the very shoulder blades.
Like all the girls in the world, when there are more than two of them, they spoke without listening to each other, so loudly, desperately, in such extremely high, screeching notes, as if everything they said was an expression of the very last extreme and it was necessary , so that the whole world knows and hears it.
-...He jumped with a parachute, by God! So nice, curly, white, eyes like little buttons!
“But I couldn’t be my sister, really, I’m terribly afraid of blood!”
- Surely they will abandon us, how can you say that! That can't be true!
- Oh, what a lily!
- Mayechka, gypsy girl, what if they leave you?
- Look, Sashka, Sashka!
- So immediately fall in love, that you, that you!
- Ulka, weirdo, where did you go?
– You’ll drown yet, you said!..
They spoke that mixed, rough dialect characteristic of the Donbass, which was formed by crossing the language of the central Russian provinces with the Ukrainian folk dialect, the Don Cossack dialect and the colloquial manner of the Azov port cities - Mariupol, Taganrog, Rostov-on-Don. But no matter how girls all over the world talk, everything becomes sweet in their mouths.
“Ulechka, why did she surrender to you, my dear?” - Valya said, looking worriedly with her kind, wide-set eyes, as not only her tanned calves, but also her friend’s white round knees went under the water.
Carefully feeling the algae-covered bottom with one foot and lifting the hem higher so that the edges of her black panties became visible, Ulya took another step and, bending her tall slender figure, picked up the lily with her free hand. One of the heavy black braids with a fluffy braided end overturned into the water and floated, but at that moment Ulya made a final effort, with just her fingers, and pulled out the lily along with the long, long stem.
- Well done, Ulka! By your actions you fully deserved the title of hero of the union... Not all Soviet Union, and let's say, our union of restless girls from the Pervomaika mine! – standing calf-deep in the water and staring at her friend with rounded, boyish brown eyes, Sasha said. - Let's say kvyat! - And she, holding her skirt between her knees, with her dexterous thin fingers, tucked the lily into Ulina’s black hair, which curled coarsely over her temples and in her braids. “Oh, how it suits you, I’m already envious!.. Wait,” she suddenly said, raising her head and listening. – It’s scratching somewhere... Do you hear, girls? Damn it!..
Sasha and Ulya quickly crawled ashore.
All the girls, raising their heads, listened to the intermittent, thin, wasp-like, or low, rumbling rumble, trying to make out the plane in the white-hot air.
- Not one, but three!
- Where, where? I don't see anything...
- I don’t see either, I hear by sound...
The vibrating sounds of engines either merged into one looming menacing hum, or broke up into separate, piercing or low, rumbling sounds. The planes were already buzzing somewhere overhead, and although they were not visible, it was as if a black shadow from their wings passed across the girls’ faces.
- They must have flown to Kamensk to bomb the crossing...
– Or to Millerovo.
- You say - to Millerovo! They passed Millerovo, didn’t you hear the report yesterday?
– It’s all the same, the fighting is going on further south.
- What should we do, girls? - the girls said, again involuntarily listening to the roar of long-range artillery fire, which seemed to be approaching them.
No matter how difficult and terrible the war is, no matter how cruel the losses and suffering it brings to people, youth with its health and joy of life, with its naive kind egoism, love and dreams of the future does not want and does not know how to see the danger behind the general danger and suffering and suffering for herself until they come and disturb her happy walk.
Ulya Gromova, Valya Filatova, Sasha Bondareva and all the other girls just this spring graduated from the ten-year school at the Pervomaisky mine.
Graduating from school is an important event in life. young man, and graduating from school during the war is a very special event.
All last summer, when the war began, high school students, boys and girls, as they were still called, worked on the collective and state farms adjacent to the city of Krasnodon, in the mines, at the steam locomotive plant in Voroshilovgrad, and some even went to the Stalingrad tractor factory, which made now tanks.
In the fall, the Germans invaded Donbass and occupied Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don. Of all Ukraine, only the Voroshilovgrad region still remained free from the Germans, and the government from Kyiv, retreating with army units, moved to Voroshilovgrad, and the regional institutions of Voroshilovgrad and Stalino, the former Yuzovka, were now located in Krasnodon.
Until late autumn, while the front was established in the south, people from the German-occupied areas of Donbass kept walking and walking through Krasnodon, kneading the red mud through the streets, and it seemed that the mud was getting more and more because people were bringing it from the steppe on their boots. The schoolchildren were completely prepared to be evacuated to the Saratov region along with their school, but the evacuation was canceled. The Germans were detained far beyond Voroshilovgrad, Rostov-on-Don was recaptured from the Germans, and in the winter the Germans were defeated near Moscow, the offensive of the Red Army began, and people hoped that everything would work out.
Schoolchildren are accustomed to the fact that in their cozy apartments, in standard stone houses under eternit roofs in Krasnodon, and in the farm huts of Pervomaika, and even in clay huts in Shanghai - in these small apartments that seemed empty in the first weeks of the war because a father or brother has gone to the front - now strangers live, spend the night, and change: workers of foreign institutions, soldiers and commanders of Red Army units stationed or passing to the front.
They learned to recognize all branches of the military, military ranks, types of weapons, brands of motorcycles, trucks and cars, their own and captured ones, and at first glance guessed the types of tanks - not only when the tanks were resting heavily somewhere on the side of the street, under the cover of poplars, in the haze of hot air flowing from the armor, and when, like thunder, they rolled along the dusty Voroshilovgrad highway and when they skidded along the autumn, spreading, and winter, snow-covered military roads to the west.
They could no longer distinguish their own and German planes not only by their appearance, but also by their sound; they could distinguish them in the blazing sun, and red with dust, and in the starry sky, and in the black Donetsk sky, rushing like a whirlwind like soot in hell.
“These are our “lags” (or “migi”, or “yaks”),” they said calmly.
- There's the Messera, let's go!..
“It was the Yu-87 that went to Rostov,” they said casually.
They were accustomed to night duty in the air defense detachment, duty with a gas mask over their shoulder, in mines, on the roofs of schools, hospitals, and their hearts no longer shuddered when the air shook from long-range bombing and the beams of searchlights, like spokes, crossed in the distance, in the night sky above Voroshilovgrad, and the glow of fires rose here and there along the horizon, and when enemy dive-bombers in broad daylight, suddenly turning out of the depths of the sky, with a howl, brought down land mines on the columns of trucks stretching far in the steppe, and then for a long time fired cannons and machine guns along along the highway, from which soldiers and horses scattered in both directions, like water ripped apart by a speedboat.
They fell in love with the long journey to the collective farm fields, songs at the top of their voices in the wind from trucks in the steppe, summer suffering among the vast wheat fields sagging under the weight of grain, intimate conversations and sudden laughter in the silence of the night, somewhere in the oat floor, and long sleepless nights on the roof, when the hot palm of a girl, without moving, rests in the rough hand of a young man for an hour, and two, and three, and the morning dawn rises over the pale hills, and the dew glistens on the grayish-pink ethernite roofs, on red tomatoes and droplets from curled yellow autumn leaves of acacias, like mimosa flowers, right on the ground in the front garden, and the smell of the roots of withered flowers rotting in the damp earth, the smoke of distant fires, and the rooster crows as if nothing had happened...
And this spring they graduated from school, said goodbye to their teachers and organizations, and the war, as if it was waiting for them, looked straight into their eyes.
On June 23, our troops retreated to the Kharkov direction. On July 2, fighting broke out in the Belgorod and Volchansky directions with the enemy going on the offensive. And on July 3, like thunder, a radio message broke out that our troops had abandoned the city of Sevastopol after an eight-month defense.
Stary Oskol, Rossosh, Kantemirovka, battles west of Voronezh, battles on the outskirts of Voronezh, July 12 - Lisichansk. And suddenly our retreating units poured through Krasnodon.
Lisichansk was already very close. Lisichansk - this meant that tomorrow to Voroshilovgrad, and the day after tomorrow here, to Krasnodon and Pervomaika, to the streets familiar to every blade of grass with dusty jasmines and lilacs protruding from the front gardens, to the grandfather’s garden with apple trees and to the cool, with shutters closed from the sun, hut, where still hanging on a nail, to the right of the door, is my father’s miner’s jacket, as he hung it himself when he came home from work, before going to the military registration and enlistment office - in the hut, where his mother’s warm, veiny hands washed every floorboard until it shined and they watered the Chinese rose on the windowsill, and threw a colorful tablecloth on the table, smelling of the freshness of a harsh linen, - maybe a German will come in!
Very positive, sensible, shaved quartermaster majors, who always knew everything, settled in the city so firmly, as if for life, who exchanged cards with their owners with cheerful jokes, bought salted kavuns at the market, willingly explained the situation at the fronts and, on occasion, even did not They spared canned food for the owner's borscht. In the Gorky Club at Mine No. 1-bis and in the Lenin Club in the city park there were always a lot of lieutenants hanging around, lovers of dancing, cheerful and either courteous or mischievous - you won’t understand. Lieutenants appeared in the city and then disappeared, but many new ones always arrived, and the girls were so accustomed to their constantly changing tanned, courageous faces that they all seemed equally at home.
And suddenly there were none of them at once.
At the Verkhneduvannaya station, this peaceful stop, where, returning from a business trip or a trip to relatives, or to summer holidays after a year of studying at the university, every Krasnodon resident considered himself already at home - at this Verkhneduvannaya and at all other stations railway On Likhaya - Morozovskaya - Stalingrad, machines, people, shells, cars, bread were piled up.
From the windows of the houses, shaded by acacias, maples, and poplars, the crying of children and women could be heard. There the mother equipped the child who was leaving the orphanage or school, there they saw off their daughter or son, there the husband and father, who left the city with their organization, said goodbye to the family. And in some houses with the shutters tightly closed, there was such silence that it was even worse than a mother’s crying - the house was either completely empty, or perhaps one old woman-mother, having seen off the whole family, with her black hands hanging down, sat motionless in the upper room, unable to already and cry, with iron flour in my heart.
The girls woke up in the morning to the sounds of distant gun shots, quarreled with their parents - the girls convinced their parents to leave immediately and leave them alone, and the parents said that their lives had already passed, but the Komsomol girls needed to get away from sin and misfortune - the girls quickly had breakfast and ran one to another for news. And so, huddled in a flock like birds, exhausted from the heat and restlessness, they either sat for hours in a dimly lit little room with one of their friends or under an apple tree in a little garden, or ran away into a shady forest gully by the river, in a secret premonition of misfortune, which they even They were unable to grasp it either with their hearts or their minds.
And then it broke out.
- Voroshilovgrad has already been surrendered, but they don’t tell us! - said a small, wide-faced girl with a pointed nose, shiny, smooth, as if glued-on hair, and two short and lively braids sticking out forward, in a sharp voice.
This girl's last name was Vyrikova, and her name was Zina, but since childhood no one at school called her by her first name, but only by her last name: Vyrikova and Vyrikova.
– How can you talk like that, Vyrikova? If they don’t say it, it means they haven’t passed yet,” said Maya Peglivanova, a naturally dark-skinned, beautiful, black-eyed girl, like a gypsy, and proudly pursed her lower, full, willful lip.
At school, before graduating this spring, Maya was the secretary of the Komsomol organization, she was used to correcting everyone and educating everyone, and she generally wanted everything to always be correct.
- We have long known everything that you can say: “Girls, you don’t know dialectics!” – Vyrikova said, sounding so much like Maya that all the girls laughed. - They will tell us the truth, keep your pockets wider! We believed, believed and lost our faith! - said Vyrikova, sparkling with her close eyes and horns like a bug, militantly sticking out her sharp braids sticking out forward. - Rostov has probably been surrendered again, we have nowhere to go. And they themselves are scurrying! – said Vyrikova, apparently repeating words that she often heard.
“You talk strangely, Vyrikova,” Maya said, trying not to raise her voice. - How can you say that? After all, you are a Komsomol member, you were a pioneer leader!
“Don’t mess with her,” said Shura Dubrovina quietly, a silent girl older than the others, with a short manly haircut, no eyebrows, with wild light eyes that gave her face a strange expression.
Shura Dubrovina, a student at Kharkov University, last year, before the Germans occupied Kharkov, fled to Krasnodon to see her father, a shoemaker and saddler. She was about four years older than the other girls, but she always kept in their company; She was secretly, like a girl, in love with Maya Peglivanova and always and everywhere followed Maya - “like a thread following a needle,” the girls said.
- Don't mess with her. If she’s already put on such a cap, you won’t over-cap her,” Shura Dubrovina told Maya.
“We spent the whole summer digging trenches, we spent so much energy doing it, I was so sick for a month, and who is sitting in these trenches now? – Little Vyrikova spoke without listening to Maya. – Grass grows in the trenches! Isn't it true?
Thin Sasha raised her sharp shoulders with feigned surprise and, looking at Vyrikova with rounded eyes, whistled protractedly.
But, apparently, it was not so much what Vyrikova said, but the general state of uncertainty that forced the girls to listen to her words with painful attention.
- No, really, the situation is terrible? – timidly looking first at Vyrikova, then at Maya, said Tonya Ivanikhina, the youngest of the girls, large, long-legged, almost a girl, with a large nose and thick strands of dark brown hair tucked behind her large ears. Tears began to shine in her eyes.
Ever since her beloved older sister Lilya, who had gone to the front as a military paramedic at the beginning of the war, went missing in the battles in the Kharkov direction, everything, everything in the world seemed irreparable and terrible to Tonya Ivanikhin, and her sad eyes were always wet.
And only Ulya did not take part in the girls’ conversation and did not seem to share their excitement. She unraveled the end of a long black braid that had been soaked in the river, wrung out her hair, braided it, then, exposing first one or the other wet legs to the sun, she stood there for a while, bowing her head with this white lily, which suited her black eyes and hair so well, definitely listening to myself. When her feet were dry, Ulya used her long palm to wipe the soles of her feet, which were tanned along the high, dry instep and seemed to have a light rim along the bottom of her feet, wiped her toes and heels, and with a deft, habitual movement, put her feet into her shoes.
- Oh, I’m a fool, a fool! And why didn’t I go to a special school when they offered me? - said thin Sasha. “I was offered to go to a special school for the Enkaveda,” she explained naively, looking at everyone with boyish carelessness, “if I had stayed here, behind German lines, you wouldn’t even know anything.” You would all just be screwed here, but I can’t even give a damn. “Why is Sasha so calm?” And it turns out that I am staying here from the Enkavede! I would have played with these foolish Germans,” she suddenly snorted, looking at Vyrikova with sly mockery, “I would have played with these foolish Germans as I wanted!”
Ulya raised her head and looked seriously and attentively at Sasha, and something trembled slightly in her face, either her lips, or her thin nostrils, with a rush of blood.
- I will be left without any enkavede. And what? – Vyrikova said, angrily sticking out her braided horns. “Since no one cares about me, I’ll stay and live as I lived.” And what? I am a student, according to German standards, like a high school student: after all, they cultured people, what will they do to me?
-Like a high school student?! – Maya suddenly exclaimed, turning all pink.
- Just back from the gymnasium, hello!
And Sasha portrayed Vyrikova so similar that the girls laughed again.
And at that moment a heavy, terrible blow that shook the earth and air stunned them. Withered leaves, twigs, wood dust from the bark fell from the trees, and even ripples passed through the water.
The girls' faces turned pale and they looked at each other silently for several seconds.
- Did you really dump it somewhere? – Maya asked.
- They flew by a long time ago, but we haven’t heard anything new! – Tonya Ivanikhina, who was always the first to feel misfortune, said with widened eyes.
At that moment, two explosions that almost merged together - one very close, and the other a little late, distant - shook the surroundings.
As if by agreement, without making a sound, the girls rushed towards the village, flashing their tanned calves in the bushes.
Fadeev Alexander
Young Guard
Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev
Young Guard
Part one
Part two
Afterword by Vera Inber. Think about all this!
DEAR FRIEND!
Let this book be your faithful companion.
Its heroes are your peers. If they were alive now, they would be your friends.
Take care of this book, I wrote it good man- for you.
And it doesn’t matter how you received it: as a gift from school or from your parents, or you earned money yourself and bought it with your first paycheck - let it always be with you. She will help you grow up to be a true citizen of our great Motherland.
Forward, towards the dawn, comrades in the struggle!
We will pave the way for ourselves with bayonets and grapeshot...
So that labor becomes the ruler of the world
And he sold everyone together in one family,
To battle, young guard of workers and peasants!
Song of Youth
PART ONE
Chapter one
No, just look, Valya, what a miracle this is! Lovely! Like a statue... After all, she is not marble, not alabaster, but alive, but how cold! And what a delicate, delicate work - human hands could never do this. Look how she rests on the water, pure, strict, indifferent... And this is her reflection in the water - it’s even hard to say which one is more beautiful, but the colors? Look, look, it’s not white, that is, it’s white, but there are so many shades - yellowish, pinkish, some kind of heavenly, and inside, with this moisture, it’s pearly, simply dazzling - people have such colors and names No!..
So said, leaning out of a willow bush onto the river, a girl with black wavy braids, in a bright white blouse and with such beautiful, wet black eyes, opened from the sudden strong light gushing out of them, that she herself resembled this lily reflected in the dark water .
I found time to admire! And you are wonderful, Ulya, by God! - another girl, Valya, answered her, following her, sticking her slightly high-cheekboned and slightly snub-nosed face out onto the river, but very pretty with its fresh youth and kindness. And, without looking at the lily, she restlessly looked along the shore for the girls they had strayed from. - Aw!..
Ay... ay... yy! - responded to different voices very close.
Come here!.. Ulya found a lily,” said Valya, looking lovingly and mockingly at her friend.
And at this time, again, like the echoes of distant thunder, the rolling of gun shots was heard - from there, from the north-west, from near Voroshilovgrad.
Again... - Ulya repeated silently, and the light that poured out of her eyes with such force went out.
Surely they will come in this time! My God! - said Valya. - Do you remember how we worried last year? And everything turned out okay! But last year they didn’t come so close. Do you hear the thumping noise?
They paused and listened.
When I hear this and see the sky, so clear, I see the branches of the trees, the grass under my feet, I feel how the sun warmed it, how delicious it smells - it hurts me so much, as if all this had already left me forever, forever, - chest Ulya spoke in an excited voice. - The soul seems to have become so hardened by this war, you have already taught it not to allow anything into itself that can soften it, and suddenly such love, such pity for everything will break through!.. You know, I can only talk about this to you .
Their faces came so close among the foliage that their breath mingled, and they looked directly into each other’s eyes.
Valya’s eyes were bright, kind, widely spaced, they met her friend’s gaze with humility and adoration. And Uli’s eyes were large, dark brown - not eyes, but eyes, with long eyelashes, milky whites, black mysterious pupils, from the very depths of which, it seemed, this moist, strong light again flowed.
The distant, echoing rumbles of gun salvos, even here, in the lowlands near the river, echoing with a slight trembling of the foliage, were each time reflected as a restless shadow on the faces of the girls.
Do you remember how good it was yesterday evening in the steppe, remember? - Ulya asked, lowering her voice.
“I remember,” Valya whispered. - This sunset. Do you remember?
Yes, yes... You know, everyone scolds our steppe, they say it’s boring, red, hills and hills, and that it’s homeless, but I love it. I remember when my mother was still healthy, she used to work on the tower, and I, still very little, would lie on my back and look high, high, thinking, how high can I look into the sky, you know, to the very heights? And yesterday it hurt me so much when we looked at the sunset, and then at these wet horses, guns, carts, and the wounded... The Red Army soldiers are walking so exhausted, covered in dust. I suddenly realized with such force that this was not a regrouping at all, but a terrible, yes, just terrible, retreat. That's why they are afraid to look you in the eye. Did you notice?
Valya silently nodded her head.
I looked at the steppe, where we sang so many songs, and at this sunset - and barely held back my tears. Have you often seen me cry? Do you remember when it started to get dark?.. They keep walking, walking in the twilight, and all the time there is this hum, flashes on the horizon and a glow - it must be in Rovenki - and the sunset is so heavy, crimson. You know, I’m not afraid of anything in the world, I’m not afraid of any struggle, difficulty, torment, but if I knew what to do... Something menacing hung over our souls,” said Ulya, and the gloomy, dim fire gilded her eyes
But how well we lived, right, Ulechka? - Valya said with tears welling up in her eyes.
How well all the people in the world could live, if only they wanted, if only they understood! - said Ulya. - But what to do, what to do! - she said in a completely different, childish voice, hearing the voices of her friends, and a mischievous expression sparkled in her eyes.
She quickly kicked off the shoes she was wearing on her bare feet, and, grabbing the hem of her dark skirt into her narrow tanned skin, boldly entered the water.
Girls, lily!.. - exclaimed a thin, flexible girl with boyish desperate eyes who jumped out of the bushes. - No, my dear! she squealed and, with a sharp movement, grabbing her skirt with both hands, flashing her dark bare feet, she jumped into the water, dousing both herself and Ulya with a fan of amber splashes. - Oh, it’s deep here! - she said with a laugh, sinking one foot into the seaweed and backing away.
The girls - there were six more of them - poured out onto the shore with noisy talk. All of them, like Ulya, and Vaya, and the thin girl Sasha who had just jumped into the water, were in short skirts and simple sweaters. Donetsk hot winds and the scorching sun, as if on purpose, to highlight the physical nature of each of the girls, one was gilded, another was darkened, and another was calcined, as if in a fiery font, arms and legs, face and neck to the very shoulder blades.
Like all girls in the world, when there are more than two of them, they spoke without listening to each other, so loudly, desperately, in such extremely high, screeching notes, as if everything they said was an expression of the very last extreme and it was necessary, so that the whole world knows and hears it.
He jumped with a parachute, by God! So nice, curly, white, eyes like buttons!
But I couldn’t be my sister, honestly, I’m terribly afraid of blood!
Surely they will abandon us, how can you say that! That can't be true!
Oh, what a lily!
Mayechka, gypsy girl, what if they leave you?
Look, Sashka, Sashka!
So immediately fall in love with you, with you!
Ulka, weirdo, where did you go?
You will drown yet, you said!..
They spoke that mixed, rough dialect characteristic of the Donbass, which was formed by crossing the language of the central Russian provinces with the Ukrainian folk dialect, the Don Cossack dialect and the colloquial manner of the Azov port cities - Mariupol, Taganrog, Rostov-on-Don. But, no matter how girls all over the world talk, everything becomes sweet in their mouths.
Ulechka, why did she surrender to you, my dear? - Valya said, looking worriedly with her kind, wide-set eyes, as not only her friend’s tanned calves, but also her friend’s white knees went under the water.
Carefully feeling the algae-covered bottom with one foot and lifting the hem higher so that the edges of her black panties became visible, Ulya took another step and, bending her tall slender figure, picked up the lily with her free hand. One of the heavy black braids with a fluffy braided end overturned into the water and floated, but at that moment Ulya made a final effort, with just her fingers, and pulled out the lily along with the long, long stem.
Well done, Ulka! By your act, you fully deserved the title of hero of the union... Not of the entire Soviet Union, but, say, of our union of restless girls from the Pervomaika mine! - standing calf-deep in the water, staring at her friend with rounded, boyish brown eyes, Sasha said. - Give me a ticket! - And she, holding her skirt between her knees, with her dexterous thin fingers, tucked the lily into Ulina’s black hair, which curled coarsely over her temples and in her braids. “Oh, how it suits you, I’m already envious!.. Wait,” she suddenly said, raising her head and listening. - It’s scratching somewhere... Do you hear, girls? Damn it!..
Sasha and Ulya quickly crawled ashore.
All the girls, raising their heads, listened to the intermittent, thin, wasp-like, or low, rumbling rumble, trying to make out the plane in the white-hot air.
Not one, but three!
Where, where? I don't see anything...
I don’t see either, I hear by sound...
The vibrating sounds of engines either merged into one looming menacing hum, or broke up into separate, piercing or low, rumbling sounds. The planes were already buzzing somewhere overhead, and although they were not visible, it was as if a black shadow from their wings passed across the girls’ faces.
They must have flown to Kamensk to bomb the crossing...
Or on Millerovo.
You say - to Millerovo! They passed Millerovo, didn’t you hear the report yesterday?
It’s all the same, the fighting is going on further south.
What should we do, girls? - the girls said, again involuntarily listening to the roar of long-range artillery fire, which seemed to be approaching them.
The city of Krasnodon (a former workers' village) is located in eastern Ukraine, on the border with Russia. He became famous thanks to facts related to the youth partisan detachment, which began its activities during the German occupation. After the liberation of Krasnodon in 1943 and the publication of a story by writer Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev in 1945, this city gained very wide popularity. This book is called "Young Guard". Summary it will help readers find out the fate of Komsomol members who defended their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War.
How it all began, or Meet the characters
In July 1942, a group of girls, including Ulyana Gromova, Valya Filatova and Sasha Bondareva (all of them were recent graduates high school mining village of Pervomaiskoe), frolicking on the river bank. But they are disturbed by the sounds of bombers flying overhead and the distant boom of artillery. Each of the girls claims that if evacuation begins, she will stay and fight the German invaders. Suddenly explosions shook the ground.
The girls come out of the forest and see a road clogged with military and civilian vehicles. Komsomol members rush to the village. Ulyana meets Lyuba Shevtsova, who reports that Soviet troops are retreating. A decision was made to blow up the plant and hastily evacuate documents and equipment. Some party workers, led by the leader of local partisans Ivan Protsenko, remain in the village, the rest of the residents are also evacuated.
Evacuation and meeting Sergei Tyulenin
This is how the work “The Young Guard” begins. A summary of the first chapters introduces the reader to the main participants of all further developments. Here such characters as Komsomol member Viktor Petrov and Oleg Koshevoy appear. There is a description of the evacuation, during which German bombers attack a column of refugees.
Meanwhile, in Krasnodon, hospital staff are trying to place the wounded soldiers who were in the hospital at home. local residents. Returning home after building defenses and digging trenches, Sergei Tyulenin, a seventeen-year-old boy who witnessed the Nazi attack on Voroshilovgrad.
When he realized that the Red Army troops were doomed, he collected rifles, revolvers and ammunition, and then buried them in his backyard. The further summary of Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard” will tell about the invasion of the village by German troops and the actions of the population remaining in Krasnodon.
The invasion of the German occupiers and the reaction of local residents
The Nazis arrive in Krasnodon. Sergei watches their approach. The German general Baron von Wenzel occupies the house of Oleg Koshevoy, where his mother and grandmother remained. Others cut down jasmine and sunflower bushes throughout the village, leaving no cover for a possible enemy. They settle in local dwellings, drink, eat and shout songs. About forty wounded Soviet soldiers who remained in the hospital were brutally shot.
Sergei Tyulenev and Valya Borsch hid in the attic of their school to spy on the enemy. They observed the German headquarters, which was located directly opposite the school building. That same night, Sergei unearths several Molotov cocktails in his yard and sets the headquarters on fire.
Thus, the book “The Young Guard,” a brief summary of which describes individual events of the Second World War, introduces the reader to heroic characters from the very first pages. Komsomol members who, despite their young age, were not afraid to resist the Nazi invaders.
Return of Oleg Koshevoy and further confrontation
What events will the following summary introduce? "Young Guard" is not only the title of the work. This is the Komsomol underground organization that was formed in Krasnodon. And it all begins with the return of Oleg Koshevoy to the village. He meets Sergei Tyulenin, and together the guys begin to look for contact with the underground in order to convince the partisans that they can be trusted, despite their young age.
The guys decide to collect all the weapons that may still remain in the steppe after the battle and hide them securely. Moreover, they are going to create their own youth organization. Philip Lyutikov, who was the secretary of the district committee, soon attracted many Komsomol members to underground work, among them Oleg Koshevoy and Sergei Tyulenev. This is how the Young Guard was formed. The novel, a brief summary of which tells the reader about the members of this organization, was named after it.
Not everyone turned out to be brave Komsomol members
Further in the novel the battles of the partisan detachment led by Protsenko are described. At first everything goes well, but after a while the fighters find themselves surrounded. A special group is assigned to ensure the detachment's retreat. Stakhovich is in it. What will the summary now introduce the reader to?
"A young novel, which, unfortunately, contains not only images of brave Komsomol members defending their homeland and loved ones from the German occupiers. There were also those who did not find enough courage to fight back. Among them was the Komsomol member Stakhovich, who chickened out and fled to Krasnodon. And there he deceived him, saying that he was sent by the headquarters for the organization. Chairman Fomin becomes the next traitor. In the region, the Nazis executed many of them, burying them alive.
Active activities of the organization
Lyubov Shevtsova, also a member of the Young Guard organization (the summary of the novel has already mentioned her name), shortly before these brutal arrests was sent by the underground organization to undergo special courses. A very bright and pretty girl now easily establishes contacts with the Nazis necessary for underground fighters, and also obtains important information. This is how the most important events of the novel “The Young Guard” begin to unfold.
The book, a brief summary of which only superficially depicts the vicissitudes of the life of young people during the Second World War, tells in great detail about each hero of the Young Guard and his tragic fate. Thanks to the active actions of Komsomol members, leaflets were posted and Ignat Fomin, who had betrayed his fellow villagers, was hanged. Then the prisoners of war of the Soviet Army were released.
The youth organization consisted of several groups. Each was responsible for the tasks assigned to it. Some attacked cars traveling with groups of Nazis, others attacked tank cars. And there was another detachment that operated absolutely everywhere. It was headed by Sergei Tyulenev. Want to know what happened next? We offer you a summary.
"Young Guard" or Careless actions of Komsomol members
So the action of the novel comes to a tragic end. The work “Young Guard” by A. A. Fadeev tells in its final chapters about the careless act of members of the organization, which caused numerous arrests and deaths. Before the New Year, Komsomol members came across a car with gifts for German soldiers. The guys decided to sell them at the market; the underground needed money. So the police got on their trail.
Arrests began. Lyutikov immediately gave the order that all members of the Young Guard leave the city. But not everyone managed to leave. Stakhovich began to betray his comrades under torture by German soldiers. Not only young Komsomol members were arrested, but also adult underground members. Oleg Koshevoy took all the blame for the organization’s actions upon himself and until the very end remained silent about the main leaders, despite the torture to which he was subjected.
The last pages of a wonderful work
How does the work written by A. A. Fadeev (“Young Guard”) end? A chapter-by-chapter summary told the reader about almost all the main events related to the Komsomol organization. And it only remains to add a few words that thanks to the courage and bravery of many Komsomol members, the Germans never found out that the head of the underground was Lyutikov.
The Young Guards were brutally beaten and tortured. Many no longer even felt the blows, but continued to remain silent. And then the half-dead prisoners, exhausted from endless torture, were killed and thrown into a mine. And already on February 15, Soviet tanks appeared on the territory of Krasnodon. This is how it ended famous novel Fadeev about the courage and bravery of young Komsomol members of this city.
Young Guard
Chapter one
No, just look, Valya, what a miracle this is! Lovely! Like a statue... After all, she is not marble, not alabaster, but alive, but how cold! And what a delicate, delicate work - human hands could never do this. Look how she rests on the water, pure, strict, indifferent... And this is her reflection in the water - it’s even difficult to say which one is more beautiful - and the colors? Look, look, it’s not white, that is, it’s white, but there are so many shades - yellowish, pinkish, some kind of heavenly, and inside, with this moisture, it’s pearly, simply dazzling - people have such colors and names No!..
So said, leaning out of a willow bush onto the river, a girl with black wavy braids, in a bright white blouse and with such beautiful, moistened black eyes, opened from the sudden strong light gushing out of them, that she herself resembled this lily reflected in the dark water .
- I found time to admire! And you are wonderful, Ulya, by God! - another girl, Valya, answered her, following her, sticking her slightly high-cheekboned and slightly snub-nosed face out onto the river, but very pretty with its fresh youth and kindness. And, without looking at the lily, she restlessly looked along the shore for the girls they had strayed from. - Aw!..
- Ay... ay... yy! - they responded to different voices very close by.
“Come here!.. Ulya found a lily,” said Valya, looking lovingly and mockingly at her friend.
And at this time, again, like the echoes of distant thunder, the rolling of gun shots was heard - from there, from the north-west, from near Voroshilovgrad.
- Again!
“Again...” Ulya repeated silently, and the light that poured out of her eyes with such force went out.
- Surely they will come in this time! My God! - said Valya. - Do you remember how we lived last year? And everything worked out! But last year they didn't come that close. Do you hear how it thumps?
They paused and listened.
- When I hear this and see the sky, so clear, I see the branches of the trees, the grass under my feet, I feel how the sun warmed it, how delicious it smells - it hurts me so much, as if all this had already left me forever, forever, - Ulya spoke in a deep, worried voice. - The soul seems to have become so hardened by this war, you have already taught it not to allow anything into itself that can soften it, and suddenly such love breaks through, such pity for everything!.. You know, I can only talk about this to you .
Their faces came so close among the foliage that their breath mingled, and they looked directly into each other’s eyes.
Valya’s eyes were bright, kind, widely spaced, they met her friend’s gaze with humility and adoration. And Uli’s eyes were large, dark brown - not eyes, but eyes, with long eyelashes, milky whites, black mysterious pupils, from the very depths of which, it seemed, this moist, strong light again flowed.
The distant, echoing rumbles of gun salvos, even here, in the lowlands near the river, echoing with a slight trembling of the foliage, were each time reflected as a restless shadow on the faces of the girls.
- Do you remember how good it was yesterday evening in the steppe, remember? - Ulya asked, lowering her voice.
“I remember,” Valya whispered. - This sunset. Do you remember?
- Yes, yes... You know, everyone scolds our steppe, they say it’s boring, red, hills and hills, and that it’s homeless, but I love it. I remember when my mother was still healthy, she used to work on the tower, and I, still very little, would lie on my back and look high, high, thinking, how high can I look into the sky, you know, to the very heights? And yesterday it hurt me so much when we looked at the sunset, and then at these wet horses, guns, carts, and the wounded... The Red Army soldiers are walking so exhausted, covered in dust. I suddenly realized with such force that this was not a regrouping at all, but a terrible, yes, just terrible, retreat. That's why they are afraid to look you in the eye. Did you notice?
Valya silently nodded her head.
“I looked at the steppe, where we sang so many songs, and at this sunset - and I could barely hold back my tears. Have you often seen me cry? Do you remember when it started to get dark?.. They all walk, walk in the twilight, and all the time there is this hum, flashes on the horizon and a glow - it must be in Rovenki - and the sunset is so heavy, crimson. You know, I’m not afraid of anything in the world, I’m not afraid of any struggle, difficulties, torment, but if I knew what to do... Something menacing hung over our souls,” said Ulya, and a gloomy, dim fire gilded her eyes.
- But how well we lived, right, Ulechka? - Valya said with tears welling up in her eyes.
- How well all the people in the world could live, if they only wanted, if only they understood! - said Ulya. - But what to do, what to do! - she said in a completely different, childish voice, hearing the voices of her friends, and a mischievous expression sparkled in her eyes.
She quickly kicked off the shoes she was wearing on her bare feet, and, grabbing the hem of her dark skirt into her narrow tanned skin, boldly entered the water.
“Girls, lily!..” exclaimed a thin, flexible girl with boyish desperate eyes who jumped out of the bushes. - No, my dear! - she squealed and, with a sharp movement, grabbing her skirt with both hands, flashing her dark bare feet, she jumped into the water, dousing both herself and Ulya with a fan of amber splashes. - Oh, it’s deep here! - she said with a laugh, sinking one foot into the seaweed and backing away.
The girls - there were six more of them - poured out onto the shore with noisy talk. All of them, like Ulya, and Vaya, and the thin girl Sasha who had just jumped into the water, were in short skirts and simple sweaters. Donetsk hot winds and the scorching sun, as if on purpose, to highlight the physical nature of each of the girls, one was gilded, another was darkened, and another was calcined, as if in a fiery font, arms and legs, face and neck to the very shoulder blades.
Like all girls in the world, when there are more than two of them, they spoke without listening to each other, so loudly, desperately, in such extremely high, screeching notes, as if everything they said was an expression of the very last extreme and it was necessary, so that the whole world knows and hears it.
-...He jumped with a parachute, by God! So nice, curly, white, eyes like buttons!
“But I couldn’t be my sister, I really mean it, I’m terribly afraid of blood!”
- Surely they will abandon us, how can you say that! That can't be true!
- Oh, what a lily!
- Mayechka, gypsy girl, what if they leave you?
- Look, Sashka, Sashka!
- So immediately fall in love, like you, like you!
- Ulka, weirdo, where did you go?
- You will drown, you said!..
They spoke that mixed, rough dialect characteristic of the Donbass, which was formed by crossing the language of the central Russian provinces with the Ukrainian folk dialect, the Don Cossack dialect and the colloquial manner of the Azov port cities - Mariupol, Taganrog, Rostov-on-Don. But, no matter how girls all over the world talk, everything becomes sweet in their mouths.
- Ulechka, why did she surrender to you, my dear? - Valya said, looking worriedly with her kind, wide-set eyes, as not only her friend’s tanned calves, but also her friend’s white knees went under the water.
Carefully feeling the algae-covered bottom with one foot and lifting the hem higher, so that the edges of her black panties became visible, Ulya took another step and, bending her tall slender figure, picked up the lily with her free hand. One of the heavy black braids with a fluffy unbraided end overturned into the water and floated, but at that moment Ulya made a last effort, with just her fingers, and pulled out the lily along with the long, long stem.
- Well done, Ulka! By your deed, you fully deserved the title of hero of the union... Not of the entire Soviet Union, but, say, of our union of restless girls from the Pervomaika mine! - standing calf-deep in the water, staring at her friend with rounded, boyish brown eyes, Sasha said. - Give me a ticket! - And she, holding her skirt between her knees, with her dexterous thin fingers, tucked the lily into Ulina’s black hair, which curled coarsely over her temples and in her braids. “Oh, how it suits you, I’m already envious!.. Wait,” she suddenly said, raising her head and listening. - It’s scratching somewhere... Do you hear, girls? Damn it!..
Sasha and Ulya quickly crawled ashore.
All the girls, raising their heads, listened to the intermittent, thin, wasp-like, or low, rumbling rumble, trying to make out the plane in the white-hot air.
- Not one, but three!
- Where, where? I don't see anything...
- I don’t see either, I hear by sound...
The vibrating sounds of engines either merged into one looming menacing hum, or broke up into separate, piercing or low, rumbling sounds. The planes were already buzzing somewhere overhead, and although they were not visible, it was as if a black shadow from their wings passed across the girls’ faces.
- They must have flown to Kamensk to bomb the crossing...
- Or to Millerovo.
- You say - to Millerovo! They passed Millerovo, didn’t you hear the report yesterday?
- It’s all the same, the fighting is going on further south.
- What should we do, girls? - the girls said, again involuntarily listening to the roar of long-range artillery fire, which seemed to be approaching them.
No matter how difficult and terrible the war is, no matter how cruel the losses and suffering it brings to people, youth with its health and joy of life, with its naive kind egoism, love and dreams of the future does not want and does not know how to see the danger behind the general danger and suffering and suffering for herself until they come and disturb her happy walk.
Ulya Gromova, Valya Filatova, Sasha Bondareva and all the other girls just this spring graduated from the ten-year school at the Pervomaisky mine.
Graduating from school is an important event in the life of a young man, and graduating from school during the war is a very special event.
All last summer, when the war began, high school students, boys and girls, as they were still called, worked on the collective and state farms adjacent to the city of Krasnodon, in the mines, at the locomotive plant in Voroshilovgrad, and some even went to the Stalingrad tractor factory, which made now tanks.
In the fall, the Germans invaded Donbass and occupied Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don. Of all Ukraine, only the Voroshilovgrad region still remained free from the Germans, and the government from Kyiv, retreating with army units, moved to Voroshilovgrad, and the regional institutions of Voroshilovgrad and Stalino, the former Yuzovka, were now located in Krasnodon.
Until late autumn, while the front was established in the south, people from the German-occupied areas of Donbass kept walking and walking through Krasnodon, kneading the red mud through the streets; and it seemed that there was more and more dirt because people were bringing it from the steppe on their boots. The schoolchildren were completely prepared to be evacuated to the Saratov region along with their school, but the evacuation was canceled. The Germans were detained far in front of Voroshilovgrad, Rostov-on-Don was recaptured from the Germans, and in the winter the Germans were defeated near Moscow, the offensive of the Red Army began, and people hoped that everything would still work out.
Schoolchildren are accustomed to the fact that in their cozy apartments, in standard stone houses under eternite roofs in Krasnodon, and in the farm huts of Pervomaika, and even in clay huts in Shanghai - in these small apartments that seemed in the first weeks of the war empty because a father or brother went to the front, now strangers live and spend the night: workers of foreign institutions, soldiers and commanders of Red Army units stationed or passing to the front.
They learned to recognize all branches of the military, military ranks, types of weapons, brands of motorcycles, trucks and cars, their own and captured ones. At first glance, they could guess the types of tanks - not only when the tanks were resting heavily somewhere on the side of the street, under the cover of poplars, in the haze of hot air flowing from the armor, but also when, like thunder, they rolled along the dusty Voroshilovgrad highway or skidded along the autumn, spread out and along the winter, snow-covered military roads to the west.
They could no longer distinguish their own and German planes not only by their appearance, but also by their sound; they could distinguish them in the blazing sun, and red with dust, and in the starry, and in the black Donetsk sky, rushing like a whirlwind like soot in hell.
“These are our “lags” (or “migi”, or “yaks”),” they said calmly.
- There's the Messera, let's go!..
“It was the Yu-87 that went to Rostov,” they said casually.
They are accustomed to night duty in the air defense detachment, duty with a gas mask over their shoulder in mines, on the roofs of schools and hospitals. And no one’s heart shuddered anymore when the air shook from long-distance bombing and the beams of searchlights, like spokes, crossed in the distance, in the night sky above Voroshilovgrad, and the glow of fires rose here and there along the horizon, or when enemy dive bombers in broad daylight rained down land mines on columns of trucks stretching far into the steppe, and then howling from cannons and machine guns along the highway, from which soldiers and horses scattered in both directions, like water ripped apart by a speedboat.
They fell in love with the long journey to the collective farm fields, singing loudly in the wind from trucks in the steppe; fell in love with the summer suffering among the vast wheat fields, languishing under the weight of the grain, intimate conversations and sudden laughter in the silence of the night, somewhere in the oat floor; fell in love with long sleepless nights on the roof, when the hot palm of a girl, without moving, rests in the rough hand of a young man for an hour, and two, and three, and the morning dawn rises over the pale hills, and the dew glistens on the grayish-pink roofs, dripping from the curled up autumn acacia leaves right on the ground in the front garden, and the smell of the roots of withered flowers rotting in the damp earth and the smoke of distant fires, and the rooster crows as if nothing had happened...
And this spring they graduated from school, said goodbye to their teachers and organizations, and the war, as if it was waiting for them, looked straight into their eyes.
On June 23, our troops retreated to the Kharkov direction. And on July 3, like thunder, a radio message broke out that our troops had abandoned the city of Sevastopol after an eight-month defense.
Stary Oskol, Rossosh, Kantemirovka, battles west of Voronezh, battles on the outskirts of Voronezh, July 12 - Lisichansk. And suddenly our retreating units poured through Krasnodon.
Lisichansk was already very close. Lisichansk - this meant that tomorrow to Voroshilovgrad, and the day after tomorrow here, to Krasnodon and “Pervomaika”, to the streets familiar to every blade of grass with dusty jasmines and lilacs protruding from the front gardens, to the grandfather’s garden with apple trees, to the cool, with closed shutters, the hut where my father's miner's jacket still hangs on a nail, just as he hung it himself when he came home from work before going to the military registration and enlistment office - in the same hut where my mother's warm, veiny hands washed every floorboard until it shined, and watered it with Chinese a rose on the windowsill, and they threw a colorful tablecloth on the table, smelling of the freshness of a harsh linen, - maybe a German fascist will come in!
During the respite, very positive, reasonable, shaven quartermaster majors, who always knew everything, settled in the city so firmly, as if for life. They exchanged cards with their owners with cheerful jokes, bought salty kavuns at the market, willingly explained the situation at the fronts and, on occasion, did not even spare canned food for the owner’s borscht. In the Gorky Club at Mine No. 1-bis and in the Lenin Club, in the city park, there were always a lot of lieutenants hanging around, lovers of dancing, cheerful and either courteous or mischievous - you won’t understand. Lieutenants appeared in the city and then disappeared, but many new ones always arrived, and the girls were so accustomed to their constantly changing tanned, courageous faces that they all seemed equally at home.
And suddenly there were none of them at once.
At the Verkhneduvannaya station, this peaceful stop, where, returning from a business trip or a trip to relatives or on summer holidays after a year of studying at a university, every Krasnodon resident considered himself already at home - at this Verkhneduvannaya and at all other stations of the railway to Likhaya - Morozovskaya - Stalingrad was filled with machines, people, shells, cars, bread.
From the windows of the houses, shaded by acacias, maples, and poplars, the crying of children and women could be heard. There the mother equipped the child who was leaving the orphanage or school, there they saw off their daughter or son, there the husband or father, who was leaving the city with his organization, said goodbye to his family. And in some houses with the shutters tightly closed, there was such silence that it was even worse than a mother’s crying - the house was either completely empty, or perhaps one old woman, the mother, having seen off the whole family, with her black hands hanging down, sat motionless in the upper room, no longer able to and cry, with iron flour in my heart.
The girls woke up in the morning to the sounds of distant gun shots, quarreled with their parents, - the girls convinced their parents to leave immediately and leave them alone, and the parents said that their lives had already passed, but the Komsomol girls needed to get away from sin and misfortune - the girls quickly had breakfast and ran one to another for news. And so, huddled in a flock like birds, exhausted from the heat and restlessness, they either sat for hours in a dimly lit little room with one of their friends or under an apple tree in a little garden, or ran away into a shady forest gully by the river, in a secret premonition of misfortune, which they even They were unable to grasp it either with their hearts or their minds.
And then it broke out.
- Voroshilovgrad has already been surrendered, but they don’t tell us! - said a small, wide-faced girl with a pointed nose, shiny, smooth, as if glued-on hair, and two short and lively braids sticking out forward, in a sharp voice.
This girl's last name was Vyrikova, and her name was Zina, but since childhood no one at school called her by her first name, but only by her last name: Vyrikova and Vyrikova.
- How can you talk like that, Vyrikova? If they don’t say it, it means they haven’t passed yet,” said Maya Peglivanova, a naturally dark-skinned, beautiful, black-eyed girl, like a gypsy, and proudly pursed her lower, full, willful lip.
At school, before graduating this spring, Maya was the secretary of the Komsomol organization, she was used to correcting everyone and educating everyone, and she generally wanted everything to always be correct.
- We have long known everything that you can say: “Girls, you don’t know dialectics!” - Vyrikova said so much like Maya that all the girls laughed. - They will tell us the truth, keep your pockets wider! We believed, believed and lost our faith! - said Vyrikova, sparkling with her close eyes and horns like a bug, militantly sticking out her sharp braids. - Probably, Rostov was surrendered again, we have nowhere to tick. And they themselves are scurrying! - said Vyrikova, apparently repeating a word that she often heard.
“You talk strangely, Vyrikova,” Maya said, trying not to raise her voice. - How can you say that? After all, you are a Komsomol member, you were a pioneer leader!
“Don’t mess with her,” said Shura Dubrovina quietly, a silent girl older than the others, with a short manly haircut, no eyebrows, with wild light eyes that gave her face a strange expression.
Shura Dubrovina, a student at Kharkov University, last year, before the occupation of Kharkov by the Germans, returned to Krasnodon to her father, a shoemaker and saddler. She was about four years older than the other girls, but she always kept in their company; She was secretly, like a girl, in love with Maya Peglivanova and always and everywhere followed Maya - “like a thread following a needle,” the girls said.
- Don't mess with her. If she’s already put on such a cap, you won’t over-cap her,” Shura Dubrovina told Maya.
“We spent the whole summer digging trenches, we spent so much time doing it, I was so sick for a month, and who is sitting in these trenches now? - Little Vyrikova spoke without listening to Maya. Grass grows in the trenches! Isn't it true?
Thin Sasha raised her sharp shoulders with feigned surprise and, looking at Vyrikova with rounded eyes, whistled protractedly.
But, apparently, it was not so much what Vyrikova said, but the general state of uncertainty that forced the girls to listen to her words with painful attention.
- No, really, the situation is terrible? - Timidly looking first at Vyrikova, then at Maya, said Tonya Ivanikhina, the youngest of the girls, long-legged, almost a girl, with a large nose and thick strands of dark brown hair tucked behind her large ears. Tears began to shine in her eyes.
Ever since her beloved older sister Lilya, who had gone to the front as a military paramedic at the beginning of the war, went missing in the battles in the Kharkov direction, everything, everything in the world seemed irreparable and terrible to Tonya Ivanikhin, and her sad eyes were always wet.
And only Ulya did not take part in the girls’ conversation and did not seem to share their excitement. She unraveled the end of a long black braid that had been soaked in the river, wrung out her hair, braided it, then, exposing first one or the other wet legs to the sun, she stood there for a while, bowing her head with this white lily, which suited her black eyes and hair so well, definitely listening to myself. When her feet were dry, Ulya wiped the soles of her tanned, high, dry insteps with her long palm, as if surrounded by a light rim along the bottom of her feet, wiped her toes and heels, and with a deft, habitual movement, put her feet into her shoes.
- Oh, I'm a fool, a fool! And why didn’t I go to a special school when they offered me? - said thin Sasha. “I was offered to go to a special school for the Enkaveda,” she explained naively, looking at everyone with boyish carelessness, “if I had stayed here, behind German lines, you wouldn’t even know anything.” You would all just be screwed here, but I can’t even give a damn. “Why is Sasha so calm?” And it turns out that I am staying here from the Enkavede! I would use these fools from the Gestapo,” she suddenly snorted, looking at Vyrikova with sly mockery, “I would spin these fools as I wanted!”
Ulya raised her head and looked seriously and carefully at Sasha, and something trembled slightly in her face: either her lips, or her thin, intricately cut nostrils.
- I will be left without any enkavede. And what? - Vyrikova said, angrily sticking out her braided horns. - Since no one cares about me, I will stay and live as I lived. And what? I am a student, in German terms, like a high school student: after all, they are cultured people, what will they do to me?
- Like a high school student?! - Maya suddenly exclaimed, turning all pink.
- Just from the gymnasium, hello!
And Sasha portrayed Vyrikova so similar that the girls laughed again.
And at that moment a heavy, terrible blow that shook the earth and air stunned them. Withered leaves fell from the trees, wood dust fell from the bark, and even ripples passed through the water.
The girls' faces turned pale and they looked at each other silently for several seconds.
- Did you really dump it somewhere? - Maya asked.
- They flew by a long time ago, but we haven’t heard anything new! - said Tonya Ivanikhina, who was always the first to feel misfortune, with widened eyes.
At that moment, two explosions that almost merged together - one very close, and the other a little late, distant - shook the surrounding area.
As if by agreement, without making a sound, the girls rushed towards the village, flashing their tanned calves in the bushes.
Chapter two
The girls ran across the Donetsk steppe, scorched by the sun and trampled by sheep and goats so much that dust kicked up from under their feet. It seemed incredible that they had just been embraced by fresh forest greenery. The ravine where the river flowed with a narrow strip of forest stretching along its banks was so deep that, after running three or four hundred steps, the girls could no longer see the ravine, the river, or the forest - the steppe had swallowed everything up.
It was not a flat steppe, like the Astrakhan or Salsk steppe - it was all hills and ravines, and far in the south and north it rose in high swells along the horizon, these outcrops of the wings of a giant syncline on the surface of the earth, inside of which, as in a blue dish, white-hot air floated.
Here and there along the furrowed face of this scorched blue steppe, on the hills and in the lowlands, one could see mining villages, farmsteads among the bright and dark green and yellow rectangles of wheat, corn, sunflower, beet fields, lonely copra mines, and nearby - tall, taller than headframes, dark blue cones of waste heaps formed by rock thrown out of mines.
Along all the roads connecting villages and mines, groups of refugees were stretching, trying to get to the roads to Kamensk and Likhaya.
Echoes of the distant fierce battle, or rather, many large and small battles that took place in the west and north-west and somewhere very far in the north were clearly heard here in the open steppe. The smoke of distant fires slowly rose into the sky or lay in separate heaps of clouds here and there along the horizon.
The girls, as soon as they ran out of the forest gully, were first struck by three new centers of smoke - two nearby and one distant - in the area of the city itself, not yet visible behind the hills. These were faint gray smokes that slowly dissipated in the air, and perhaps the girls would not have even paid attention to them if not for these explosions and not for the tart, garlicky smell that was becoming more and more felt as the girls approached city.