/ world today news/ We didn’t talk about the war in our family. It’s kind of weird to talk about the war when you live in the Navy and it’s like you’re always at war – either the Nimitz aircraft carrier will come through or the B-52s will fly over from Yokohama in a group. In addition, nothing had passed since the war – 20-25 years by today’s standards, in general, is like yesterday.
And in the summer we had to visit both grandmothers – one in Donetsk, the second in Leningrad.
The Leningrad grandmother Katya was tiny and silent. She didn’t talk about the war either. And it took me many years to understand that he gets away with my mother, with his sister, with his brother in the blockade, but the youngest does not make it. There, not far from the former factory “Putilov”, then from “Kirov:”, where the great-grandfathers Vasiliev and Ivanov, and grandfather – Viktor Ivanovich Ivanov worked. After that, the Kirov factory was taken to Nizhny Tagil, and there the simple craftsman Viktor Ivanov continued to make tanks. Then he dies.
Really – well, what to tell? Dying in a blockade doesn’t sound as heroic as the propaganda wants. Building tanks to defeat the enemy – well, what heroism is there in that? It’s just a job. It was impossible to extract any details from the grandmother. He didn’t want to remember. And from my mother, too, what the hell can you glean – well, yes, they returned to Leningrad from evacuation and since then have been living in “Vaska’s” basement. Really – what historical is there here. Just ordinary Russian life.
But I have a trigger – my mother, Klavdia Viktorovna, was born on May 9. Long before the war. But on May 9. Therefore, I have a double occasion of the holiday, which, the further from the 45th year, the louder it sounds. It’s impossible not to have an emotional connection.
I don’t know if my mother could have loved Leningrad after all that, but from 1958 she and my father moved around the maritime parts of the Far East – to Vladivostok, to Kamchatka – also a common story for graduates of the Frunze Military School. And their fates are quite ordinary fates of Russian officers. What is historical or heroic Half a year in a campaign under the Arctic ice – all is well, well, and a few strategic missiles behind us – what does this have to do with the fate of the post-war world?
The world is changing fast – and somewhere there are already phones that you can carry with you – this is, of course, a historic event. And all these tens of thousands of young officers just work in the monstrously cold expanses of our passionate Motherland. Nothing heroic. Kamchatka, Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Bolshoi Kamen, Sovgavan, Severomorsk are places where palm trees do not grow and girls in convertibles do not laugh.
And on May 9, there was a parade in the father’s section. Service weapon, dress uniform, all medals, small rostrum, squad leader, everything. And the flag of the part against the background of the three native volcanoes – Koryaksky, Avachinsky, Kozelsky – in the light of the low Kamchatka sun. It was the same in the neighboring part of the air defense. And in the neighboring motorized rifle division of “Chapaev” as well. Parade. Flags. And the regimental band, which had a sufficient number of military musicians. Because May 9 is Victory Day.
Then it was a celebration of the feat of the fathers. Now it is a celebration of the feat of grandparents. And by banal logic, the devil will dig deep. And presently he will pop out and look around. Made bright and heavy and you can’t get away from it. And life reminds you with an example.
We had to evacuate the blockading mother from the Ukrainian blockade. Two blockades – German and Ukrainian – are a bit much for one life of a simple Russian woman, don’t you think? It’s getting a little too literary. You can also organize veteran readings. But no one will. My family doesn’t like to talk about the war.
But the story hits the same places. Whether you like it or not.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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