Inferno - Max Hastings [227]
Meanwhile, women labouring in fields and factories in the absence of their menfolk suffered chronic hunger and were often required to perform tasks beyond their physical strength. Hernias became commonplace among those who struggled daily with heavy loads or were harnessed to the plough in lieu of dead oxen. Grossman reflected in the dark days of August 1942: “Villages have become the kingdoms of women. They drive tractors, guard warehouses, queue for vodka. Tipsy girls are out singing—they are seeing a girlfriend off to the army. Women are carrying on their shoulders the great burden of work. Women dominate. They feed and arm us now. We do the fighting. And we don’t fight well. Women look and say nothing. There’s no reproach [in their eyes], not a bitter word. Are they nursing a grievance? Or do they understand what a terrible burden a war is, even an unsuccessful one?”
Housewife Valentina Bekbulatov wrote to her son at the front, describing the family’s desperate circumstances: “Dear Vova! I received the money that you sent, but you didn’t need to bother, it’s not enough anyway to help us in our poverty, and you deprive yourself even of this meagre support. I earned only twenty-six roubles this month, so you can imagine what our situation is like—there is no chance to buy anything at the market. We are waiting for milk. Uncle Pazyuk came over recently, he brought some household stuff to exchange for flour. Aunt saw her three sons off to the army—Aleksey, Egor and Aleksandr. Aleksey has already been in a battle, Egor is in the Far East, and from Aleksandr there aren’t any letters …”
Evdokiya Kalinichenko was wounded in the leg as an army nurse, discharged and sent back to the university she had previously attended, which was evacuated to Kazakhstan. From there, she wrote to her family, painting a picture which captures a fragment of the vast collective tragedy of her people:
It sometimes seems to me that our university is a refuge for all the miserable refugeless and homeless (oh, I won’t be able to post this letter!). [She feared the wrath of the censors, but posted it anyway.] Shura was at the front. Whether or not she was married there, she returned with a child. Ah, Mayusha, you can’t imagine how people look at such girls, and what a hard time they have. She is a little older than I, completing her second year when the war began. She has neither friends nor acquaintances, only the university. She was allowed to start in the third year and given a place in the hostel. The baby is four months old, a girl who cries day and night. She needs dry nappies, yet Shura possesses only the clothes on her back. She needs to be washed, but the water freezes in her room. We drag home every piece of wood we can find. Yesterday, I spotted a huge board by the wall on my way home. It was a theatre advertisement, in red letters on black background: “Othello.” [They used it for firewood.] This means that for a couple of days Shura will be able to unwrap the little girl’s blankets, dry her nappies … Dusya, my namesake, helps Shura in everything. She is also a student, although she must be nearing forty … If it wasn’t for her, the little girl would have been long dead from cold and hunger. Aunt Dusya works as a loader at the bakery, and secretly brings some flour in her pockets. Shura makes soup from it, eats herself and feeds the little girl. People say that Dusya’s own children were killed by bombs. She talks