Reasoning-essay on the topic “man at war” based on literary works. Have we survived the Great Patriotic War? People who survived the war

- Lyudmila Vladimirovna, have you even survived the Great Patriotic War in our mass consciousness?

Very different and, of course, not enough. Because for those generations that were directly affected by the war, this topic was largely taboo. And, unable to worry, they were forced to go into defensive repression.

Then a new misfortune began - the war became the theme of the official ideology, solemn, with trumpets and banners. Something that is largely offered now.

Even later, there was a period of some oblivion of the military theme. One could consider him healthy - it is impossible for all subsequent generations to mentally live in war all their lives.

But very quickly the topic of war again became ideologically in demand, and it again began to be used with terrible force as propaganda cliches and ideology. And this, of course, is very sad. Because such use precisely cuts off the possibilities of normal living - through sympathy for people, through specific destinies. All this popular propaganda gilding always suppresses the normal flow of feelings, normal living empathy.

Who suffered more: the participants or their children?

- How did the Great Patriotic War affect the psychological health of its participants?

First of all, any war, like other tragic events (we had a lot of things - repressions, famine, and one wave overtook another - before the Great Patriotic War there was a civil war, and before that the First World War) give rise to a large number of people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Portrait of a front-line soldier.
Hood. Gennady Dobrov

Moreover, we now know that this is what it is called and has certain characteristics. For example, in connection with the Ukrainian events, as soon as painful events associated with the death of people began, psychologists began to appear almost immediately, and conversations began about the need to work with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Before, no one knew this, no one worked, and no one had any idea.

This does not mean that the syndrome did not exist and did not manifest itself in any way. Even in fiction books there is often a certain fear of front-line soldiers, who sometimes behave strangely. Some may have had outbursts of rage, for some this resulted in addiction, the destruction of previous relationships and the inability to create new strong ones, some, having survived the war, then suddenly died very early in peacetime. There are heart diseases caused by stress that has not gone away and remains locked in the psyche in the form of this post-traumatic stress syndrome.

If we talk about the Great Patriotic War, the trauma, of course, was softened by victory. The consequences of trauma are softened when a person feels like a defender and a winner, having realized the mission for which he went through all this. This circumstance seriously distinguished the veterans of the Great Patriotic War, for example, from people with the Afghan syndrome, who had no victory, no sense of being right; and they often suffered more severely from post-traumatic conditions.

But besides the military, there were also a huge number of people who were very affected by the war - civilians, children. They could not fight the enemy, but they often suffered very much, experienced heavy losses, and had terrible experiences. And no one paid attention to their post-traumatic syndrome at all.

- How did the war affect the children of war? What consequences of the war did they endure and pass on to their descendants?

A lot comes from the times of war. Parents with stress syndrome were forced to protectively turn off some of their feelings, and they, naturally, could not give their children full psychological contact. Children grew up “not receiving enough” from their parents, and, accordingly, waiting all their lives for someone to “give them more.” These “someones” were often forced to become their own children. Therefore, now my generation, give or take a few years, are people who treat their parents partly like children and are responsible for them.

As far as I remember, it was sometimes difficult for me, for example, to communicate with older relatives. One might come across, for example, the question: “Why are you continuing to study? You have a profession, you can earn a piece of bread..."

Well, yes, because it was necessary to live today, at least somehow, without hoping for anything good. I think quite a few of the military generation were like that. Although there was an interesting effect when people who themselves experienced tragic events were sometimes better preserved than their children.

If a person experiences something terrible as an adult, he has more resources, and he somehow copes. But if he himself ends up in a state of post-traumatic stress disorder, then his children will suffer greatly.

That is, while adults coped with difficulties by gritting their teeth, they, gritting their teeth, overcame it, and the children got nothing but clenched teeth. The child has a serious problem with his sense of importance, his acceptance, with his own sense of right to be.

That is why there were so many early illnesses among wartime children. Very often, as far as I can judge from statistics, the generation of war children passes away at an earlier age than their parents. Although, it would seem, they survived the war, all these traumas, losses, hunger.

People who survived the famine

- What are “blockade survivors”? Is there a psychology of a blockade survivor?

There is such a thing as a person who has survived hunger. And this is also post-traumatic disorder, which can have a long and very persistent mark and last for many decades.

This may be directly related to food. We know that people who have experienced severe famine, even after many, many years of normal existence, can be very nervous about the lack of, for example, bread in the house or cannot throw away crumbs.

So I led a group in St. Petersburg, and one of the participants told me about his relative. The man is eighty-two years old, he is a professor, very intelligent, absolutely reasonable in everything else, but at the same time the whole family knows that if there is no bread in the house, then grandfather will not sleep. Moreover, cookies and pies don’t count, there must be bread.

And he himself, as a reasonable person, understands that his behavior is inappropriate and he is uncomfortable. But everyone knows that he will sigh, walk, drink drops, try very hard, but will not be able to do anything with himself. Therefore, even at one o’clock, at least at two o’clock in the morning, at any time when this is discovered, someone gets up and goes for bread. Because this is the easiest way to still take care of grandpa. And this is how many years have passed.

Sometimes these hunger phobias take even more severe forms. For example, I had a friend whose mother and grandmother survived the blockade; her mother was taken from Leningrad as a teenager. Then, due to dystrophy, she did not have children for a long time. Finally, a late child was born, and everyone in the family was simply “obsessed” with the topic of “feeding the child.”

To the point that if a child, in their opinion, did not eat well enough, he was force-fed. Of course, on the mother’s part it was love, but for the girl it really turned into violence. And as a result, she later had a rather difficult relationship with food.

Ideology - a way to live or to close?

- We are dragging a good bouquet behind us.

Yes, people depend on each other. This transmission clings like a wheel to a wheel.

To be honest, I would like that after the fourth generation this all somehow began to heal. Because four generations is a very long time, usually at such distances generational traumas, that is, generational traumas, are weakened and blurred by the uniqueness of the stories of specific families.

This would be good, but, unfortunately, we are now dealing with a revival of the theme of war as an oath of allegiance. Again you have to think about it in a certain way, prescribed from above.

This just makes me personally feel bad, because the topic is really very difficult, very important, traumatic, there are a lot of living feelings in it. But since it has come under the radar of laws and propaganda, it is actually locked, closed.

There was a big story recently when some girl found a historical photograph of her yard during the occupation and posted it on her page. With this feeling: “wow, it turns out that in my own yard, where I have lived all my life, there were tanks, there was a fascist formation, a flag, and so on.” As a result, she was prosecuted for posting Nazi symbols!

Well, what is this? Why is this? In fact, secondary traumatization occurs, secondary intimidation by the topic and gagging. I don’t even know what to say about this.

And this ideology, which somehow crookedly, but tries to emphasize victory and the victors, and thereby, perhaps, somehow compensate for all subsequent wars without victories, is not a way to live, close the topic?

This is a way not to live, but to close. Because the topic can either be lived or closed. They say, “Hurray, hurray, hurray, someone died there, but we won.”

We see that in the films of the war years there are very few sincere dramatic scenes in which strong feelings, the experience of loss, fear, and sadness would be visible. Only heroism and triumph. In those days, when people could not afford to be sad, they had to be mobilized, overcome, struggle, fight, etc. But why now, after so many years, is this being imposed on people again. I believe that this is simply a crime against the psychological well-being of the nation.

This means not to live, but to lock it up. “Don’t you dare talk about it, don’t dare ask questions. There is one official popular print that you must repeat word for word.”

How War Becomes the Iliad

What about modern war films? Now paintings of a rather strange nature have appeared. If directors of previous years sometimes deliberately stylized their films as chronicles, now modern special effects are used. Even old films, originally black and white, were colored.

- Any historical event, even a tragic one, after some time becomes just stories, legends, including beautiful ones, including those with special effects.

We read novels, for example, about the War of the Scarlet and White Roses, but not as about events to which we relate. We empathize with the characters, we may experience some feelings, but there is still a certain convention there. For us, this is rather a universal human story.

For example, in the film “The Patriot,” we can, relatively speaking, exchange America for another country, one war for another. But we consider, first of all, human history, and the feelings of the heroes are close to us, but what exactly happened there historically is not so important to us.

Still from the film "Patriot"

For us, the Iliad is not about who won - Troy or Mycenae. For us it’s about feelings, about passions, about people. And we feel sorry for Hector and Andromache no less than for Achilles and Patroclus. We are interested in people. And in this sense, it is normal and understandable that over time, films about important events become more and more generalized, a kind of epic, stories about the universal, archetypal.

But, firstly, such processes rarely occur during the lifetime of the affected generation. And in our country, the affected generation is still alive in many ways. These are not so much veterans as children of war. For us, everything about the Patriotic War is still very painful, and we don’t care at all who was right and who won. For us, this is not yet universal to humanity, but ours.

Secondly, it would be good if similar processes naturally occurred in art. Strictly speaking, culture and art are those who must, among other things, “digest” the traumas of generations. To worry, to look for words, images, to tell stories, to help people to cry at some point, to be proud at some point - and thereby live.

Over time, specific historical plots are smelted into eternal plots that will be important not only for the literal descendants of the participants in the events, but for all of humanity for centuries. And the injury no longer hurts.

But when ideology and politics are mixed in, this whole living, natural process of healing trauma is disrupted. And if the goal of the film is not to evoke sympathy for people, but to form a certain “ideologically correct” attitude, then living does not happen.

In our country, stories “about war” are often used not to relive traumas, but to form an idea of ​​who is right and who is wrong, in order to influence, including to agitate for the adoption of some decisions by the authorities on other issues in general. And this, of course, is immoral, because it is the use of human pain as a means to achieve one's political goals. It's disgusting.

"Sideboard, carpet and husband"

Among other things, the war caused a huge gender imbalance. In my opinion, there are statistics that after the war in the country there was one man for every hundred women. Did this leave any imprint on our behavior?

- Undoubtedly. We have grown up a whole generation that has no idea about the role of a man in the family. My mother told me that she was the only one in the class of forty people whose father was alive and well. Because my grandfather was not at the front.

He was a mechanical engineer in Tashkent, involved in the acceptance of factories. They simply unloaded the equipment in the steppe, only managed to lay the foundation, and set up the machines right in the open air. The walls were already being erected while they were working and distributing shells. He was the one who accepted and posted all this.

There, in the scorching sun, he developed skin cancer, fortunately, he was later cured. But he was alive and whole. And she was the only girl in the class who had a dad, with arms, with legs, with eyes.

And a whole generation grew up without any idea that there should be a man in the family. And when they grew up, naturally, there were already boys. Women got married, but they didn’t have any model in their heads: “What should we do with them?”

And you can still really feel this, especially when you talk to older women. They may or may not have husbands - in general, it doesn’t matter. It is important that even if there is a husband, he is spoken of as an unexpected bonus. Like a rose on a cake or a bow - you also have a husband. And if he doesn’t drink or hit yet, then that’s incredible luck.

This is not someone you can rely on, not someone you feel as your destiny, this is... “We have a sideboard, a carpet and a husband.” And, of course, all this was not very good for either women or men.

Men also could not do anything with him, because they also did not have a model of male behavior in the family, they also grew up as boys among only aunties, and did not know what they were supposed to do here.

Most often, such a man occupied the safest place in the house, for example, on the sofa, with his legs pulled up, trying not to “shine.” And if this feeling of one’s own uselessness exploded, then divorces, scandals, binges or something else began.

That is, a strong gender bias has very serious consequences, and it does not go unnoticed. And this is reflected not in one generation, but also in the next one too. Accordingly, the next generation also grows up in this model: “we have a dad, but he blocks the hole in the wallpaper.” This is also a difficult question.

The leveling and healing of these roles occurs gradually, gradually, in the third or fourth generation, but this is a long process.

Generational trauma disappears in the fourth generation

- When will the consequences of the Great Patriotic War disappear completely?

It is generally believed that transgenerational injuries resolve by the fourth generation. In the sense that they overlap with the diversity of life.

Normally, there should be no clear portrait of a generation. People are different, families are different, everyone has their own history, their own destiny. And in prosperous times, people are like such a meadow with various herbs - such flowers, that, such grass, that kind - everything is different.

When a traumatic event occurs - war, repression or mass famine, there were also epidemics before - it is as if a lawnmower had passed through this meadow. She mowed everything down, and all that was left was the same stubble. And from this stubble you won’t understand who was the buttercup, who was the poppy, and who was the bell. This is how the portrait of a generation is formed. That is, such a portrait, in principle, is a pathological thing. It shouldn't exist.

And then gradual healing occurs. And then there is a very clear portrait of the first generation, a little more blurry - of the second, and even more blurry - of the third. And by the fourth there should be a variety of herbs again, everyone should be different again. Unless, of course, a new lawn mower arrives, which, unfortunately, also happens.

We partially had such a lawnmower in the 90s. It’s completely different, but it also has some features.

- How justified are attempts to “unite the nation” based on the history of wars?

It is clear that this happens when there is nothing else to unite on. But this, as I already said, is immoral, because you cannot use people - their feelings, their pain, losses, deaths - for such petty goals as politics, ratings, loyalty to power. This is a tragedy, this is a high area. You can’t exchange tragedy for all this vanity of vanities.

Interviewed by Daria Mendeleeva

A FAIR RUSSIA

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(based on eyewitness accounts,

residents of the Verkhneketsky district)

Performed:Pekhova Anna -

student of 7th grade BSS No. 1

Leaders:

teachers of municipal educational institution "Beloyarsk secondary

secondary school No. 1"

Coordinator:

head DB, MAU "Culture" Central Bank

1. Introduction…………………………….……………………………..2

2. Siege of Leningrad. …………………………………………………………..3

From the memoirs of an eyewitness Anna Alexandrovna Premina

3. Occupied territories……………………………………..4

From the memoirs of Olga Ilyinichna Volzhinina

4. Evacuation of the population from the occupied territories….….6

From the memoirs of Ogladek Zinaida Andreevna

5. Special settlers during the war…………………..8

From the memoirs of eyewitness Mareta Petrovna Vyalova

6. Dispossession of peasants………………………………………… 10

From the memoirs of Pelageya Mikhailovna Zykova

From the memoirs of Nina Stepanovna Kulikova

From the memoirs of Vladimirov Vasily Yakovlevich

7. Conclusion………………………………………………………...13

8. Appendix………………………………………………………..14

Introduction

An entire generation born between 1928 and 1945 had their childhood stolen from them. “Children of the Great Patriotic War” is what today's 70-80 year old people are called. And it's not just about the date of birth. They were raised by war...

War is the most tragic event in people's lives. It brings with it pain and loss, cruelty and destruction, the suffering of many people, especially children.

At all times, wars have brought grief, death, and destruction. And the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 was especially tragic. And it is no coincidence that she is called the Great, since she raised the entire Soviet people to fight the fascists who treacherously attacked the USSR.

Every person during the war years tried with his work at the front and in the rear to bring Victory closer. Children took an active part in this struggle along with adults. I dedicate the material I collected on the topic: “Children of War” to these events.

Almost every family sent a husband, son, or brother to the front. Only old people, women and children remained at home, on whose shoulders all the hardships of peasant labor fell. It was necessary to send as much bread and food to the front as possible. The main slogan of that time was: “Everything for the front. Everything for victory!”

From the very first days of the war, children came to the aid of adults. They worked with them in the meadows, weeded and dug potatoes, took part in harvesting grain, and the youngest collected spikelets in the fields so as not to lose a single grain - after all, their fathers and brothers needed bread at the front.

But it was not only in the fields that the children worked in their free time from school. They worked on farms, helping raise calves, piglets, and poultry. The girls knitted socks, mittens, scarves from wool, sewed tobacco pouches, and collected parcels for the front. They helped the families of fallen front-line soldiers, carried on extensive correspondence with soldiers and especially paid attention to those whose families died or were occupied in enemy-occupied territory. Frequent guests at the field camps were school propaganda teams with concerts and information from the front. And this was under conditions where the children did not have enough to eat and were poorly dressed and shod.

I have collected the memories of eyewitnesses of those terrible years, which I believe should be preserved for history. Memories of wartime childhood are the last thread connecting the modern generation with true history war years. And we have a very small amount of time to record these memories, to comprehend together with the “children of war” their stories about their wartime childhood and to preserve real documents for subsequent generations - in the name of grateful memory for the passing generation, in the name of a peaceful future for future generations.

A survivor of the siege of Leningrad, Vyalova Mareta Petrovna, whose parents were special settlers exiled to Siberia from Estonia, shared their memories with me. , - children of dispossessed and exiled peasants. and survivors of the German occupation, bombing, famine and evacuation. In my work, I tried to compare historical chronicles and eyewitness accounts. Here's what I got.

Leningrad blockade

Don't make noise around - he's breathing,

He is still alive, he hears everything...

As if from its depths there were cries: “Bread!”

They reach the seventh heaven...

But this firmament is merciless.

And looks from all the windows - death

/Anna Akhmatova/

In the summer of 1941, Army Group North, with a total number of 500 thousand people, under the command of Field Marshal von Leeb, marched towards Leningrad. On September 8, 1941, the Nazis captured the city of Shlisselburg at the source of the Neva, surrounding Leningrad from land. The 871-day siege of Leningrad began. “...First we blockade Leningrad and destroy the city with artillery and aviation... In the spring we will penetrate the city... we will take everything that is alive deep into Russia or take it prisoner, raze Leningrad to the ground and hand over the area north of the Neva to Finland.”

From the abstracts of the German report "On the Siege of Leningrad", September 21, 1941, Berlin

At the time of the blockade, there were 2 million 544 thousand people in the city, including about 400 thousand children. From the first days of September, food cards were introduced in Leningrad. All livestock on collective and state farms were slaughtered, and the meat was delivered to procurement points. Feed grain was transported to mills to be ground and used as an additive to rye flour.

"...Life in Leningrad is getting worse every day. People are starting to swell because they eat mustard and make flatbreads out of it. You can no longer get the flour dust that used to be used to glue wallpaper anywhere." “...There is terrible hunger in Leningrad. We drive through fields and landfills and collect all sorts of roots and dirty leaves from fodder beets and gray cabbage, and even those are not there.”

Saving German soldiers.

The kids stood as targets against the walls.

A rite of atrocity was carried out.

And in times of hunger only a crust of bread saved me,

Potato peelings, cake.

And bombs fell on our heads from the sky,

Not leaving everyone alive.

We, children of war, suffered a lot of grief.

Victory was the reward.

And the chronicle of the terrible years was written into memory.

The pain resonated with Echo.

Literature

Archival materials from the Municipal Archive of the Verkhneketsky District (hereinafter referred to as MAVR). Testimonies of eyewitnesses recorded during meetings Reader on the Second World War Dictionary electronic Internet site “War. Day after day" http://*****/ http://ru. wikipedia. org

Application

Evacuee ID

Certificate of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War

Memories and stories told by people who survived a terrible war.

“It was the end of November 1941, it was cold, and young ice appeared on the river. Grandmother was very worried about the hut and the cow. Since the Germans were guarding the bridge, she thin ice She moved to her side and reached the house through overgrown vegetable gardens.
There are Germans in the house, it's cold. Grandmother lit the stove and boiled water. The Germans say: "Gut, uterus, gut." They pour a mug of coffee, add rum and give it to the grandmother: “Drink, mother, drink.” Grandma thanked her and drank. I must say that she loved to drink a little.

At the end of the village, which faces the Verkhovye, stood the Finns. People were amazed at how quickly they skied down the street. They were very angry.
One day the Finns came to us and began to take the cow away for meat. The grandmother grabbed the reins and did not allow the cow to be taken away. Finn pointed a bayonet at Grandma. The Austrians came out to the noise and drove the Finns away. They themselves needed the cow - they added milk to their coffee. In addition, they took pity on young children.
The German 45th Grenadier Infantry Division, which was the first to enter Warsaw and Paris, fought in our area. It was very distinguished by Hitler, especially since it consisted mainly of Austrians. As you know, Hitler was an Austrian. Perhaps our guests were from this division.

There were several cases where men returned to the village after a long absence. The Germans, suspecting them to be partisans, shot some and hanged others. One of those who returned to his family (Voronkov I.G.) was indeed an underground partisan.
There was also a case: a man decided to curry favor with the Germans when, having scooped up water from a well, he pulled out a German rifle and gave it to them. And they asked: “Where is sir?” - and they shot him.
Already in our time, my father-in-law Mikhail Petrovich Semenikhin said that he was also then left to serve as a partisan, having previously evacuated his family. The partisans settled near the village of Sinkovets, near the Sinkovsky forest.

Since the order was received that the enemy should only leave scorched earth, in one of the villages they tried to set fire to the last hut. Men and women came running with axes and pitchforks and drove off the partisans. Soon a German patrol on horseback appeared, the partisans began to shoot at them with rifles - and they galloped away.
Food and alcohol were buried in different places in the forest. The partisans settled down in a ravine in a field, far from the forest, and dined, naturally, with alcohol. A German detachment appeared and began to comb the forest - they found no one and left. Fortunately, they didn’t look into the ravine - they didn’t expect such carelessness.
In the evening, the partisans decided to scatter their way to Yelets and join the Red Army. And so they did. My father-in-law later served as commander of a company of anti-tank rifles and reached the Dnieper, where he was seriously wounded, awarded the order Red Star and medals.

On December 26, 1941, Russian Brod was liberated from the Germans by the 13th Army, commanded by A. M. Gorodnyansky. In the battle for Russian Brod, the famous seventeen-year-old volunteer machine gunners Anya Gaiterova and Volodya Bykov, natives of Yelets, died.
The battle for the village was fierce. Long after the war, several of our destroyed tanks stood near the station; a German gun and one tank stood near the elevator. We boys loved to play war there. On the outskirts of the village, in the direction of the village of Droskovo, there were two more damaged T-34 tanks.
Let us note that the 16th Lithuanian fought in our area. rifle division, many Lithuanian soldiers were treated in Russky Brod, in the 168th evacuation hospital. 13 Lithuanian soldiers died here from severe wounds and were buried in the mass graves of this village.
The ashes of the chief of staff of this division, Colonel Kiršanas Vincas Prano, also rest here. The graves and monuments are kept in exemplary order. In Soviet times, relatives from Lithuania came to honor their memory - they were warmly welcomed.

The railway station was often bombed. Our house was next to the station, and we almost died. During the bombing, we all hid in the collective farm (former master's) basement, the men held the door with a rope from close explosions.
My father wrote us encouraging letters, for example, that his anti-aircraft battery had shot down a Junker plane. In the spring of 1942, he took part in the battle for Kharkov, where our troops had to retreat. In these battles, Army Commander A. M. Gorodnyansky died heroically.
My father miraculously avoided being surrounded near Stary Saltov. Two soldiers who were walking with him decided to swim across the lake to shorten the journey and drowned. My father caught a wandering horse and, guiding it with a twig, drove around the lake - his childhood on a collective farm helped. Then he moved to the eastern bank of the Northern Donets, where our units were stationed.

At the beginning of June, my father sent a letter urgently demanding that we evacuate. Because of censorship, he could not write everything, but my mother realized that a German offensive was possible.
And indeed, on June 28, the German offensive called “Blaue” (“Blue”) began. It was on this day that German aircraft practically destroyed the city of Livny, and yet Russian Brod is located almost nearby, 25 kilometers away.
In this section of the Bryansk Front, the 13th Army again fought, led by the new commander N.P. Pukhov. Soldiers of the famous 1st Tank Corps of M.E. Katukov also fought here.
If south of Liven the fascists advanced to the Don, in the direction of Voronezh, then north of Liven the front line practically did not change. But many of our soldiers died, among them the tank heroes who had previously become famous near Mtsensk, having delayed the advance of Guderian’s tanks to Moscow. It was at this time that Stalin’s famous order No. 227 was issued - “Not a step back.”

At the end of June, our family was evacuated to Mordovia, to the Torbeevsky district. Life was hard. It’s good that my father sent his certificate and, occasionally, money. Everything reached us - this is evidence of the efficient work of the entire state mechanism in this difficult time.
Many evacuees were sick, and some children died. And at the beginning of October 1942 we returned home, although we had not been home for a long time. We lived with relatives in Bashkatovka, in Maly Krivets with our uncle Vasily Korneevich (an infantry lieutenant, he fought at the front), and rented an apartment in Russky Brod.
On October 13, 1942, my father sent a letter in which he reproached my mother for coming home prematurely. He knew that the enemy was already fighting in Stalingrad, and was afraid that they would break through our front too. But the front in our area held out, even in the spring of 1943 there was relative calm.

Although there were no battles in Russky Brod, the residents suffered a lot of grief. Teenagers and children were especially affected. The fact is that there were a lot of mines, explosives and abandoned weapons everywhere.
Back in the summer of 1942, my father wrote to my mother that we should be wary of cartridges and fuses that children like to play with. How I looked into the water! I found a fuse somewhere (or some kind of explosive device that looked like a toy) and tried to disassemble it.
When this failed, he threw it out of frustration - an explosion occurred. My brother Yura and I had severely wounded legs. My left leg shin was crushed, my right leg suffered less damage.
Yura's injuries were smaller, but also significant. I had to stay in a military hospital for a long time. Thanks to the military surgeons, they reassembled my left shin and successfully stitched up the wound on my face. Even when Yura and I were finishing school, fragments came out of our feet on their own." - from the memoirs of V. M. Ryazantsev (Doctor of Technical Sciences, Honored Mechanical Engineer of the Russian Federation, Honorary Citizen of the city of Livny).

It has become the largest in humanity. It claimed many lives both on the line of fire and outside the theater of operations. But at the front, life bordered on death the most. Front-line 100 grams, of course, allowed for a little distraction and overcoming fear, but, in fact, from morning until late evening during active military clashes, soldiers and officers did not know when their time was to leave this world.

No matter how high-quality modern weapons were, there was always a chance of getting hit by a stray bullet or dying from an explosive one. What can we say about hastily assembled units at the beginning of the war, when a machine gun was given to three people, and you had to wait for the death of your comrades to arm yourself. They slept in dugouts and dugouts, ate there or in the fresh air, a little away from the fighting. Of course, the rear was located nearby. But the hospitals and the location of the units seemed like a completely different world.

Life in the occupied territories

It was completely unbearable here. The likelihood of being shot without any clear reason was high. Of course, it was possible to adapt to the laws of the occupiers and manage your household tolerably - share with the occupiers whatever they ask for, and they will not touch it. But everything depended on the human qualities of certain soldiers and officers. There are always simple ones on both sides. There are also always scumbags who can hardly be called people. Sometimes the locals weren't really touched. Of course, they occupied the best huts in the villages and took food, but they did not torture people. At times, some invaders shot for fun for the sake of the elderly and children, raped women, and burned houses with living people.

Hard life on the home front

Life was extremely difficult. Women and children did hard work in factories. I had to work 14 hours or more. There was not enough food, many peasants were fighting, so there was no one to feed the country. In some regions, for example in Leningrad, during the Great Patriotic War life was simply unbearable. During the siege, thousands of people died from hunger, cold and disease. Someone dropped dead in the streets, there were cases of cannibalism and corpse-eating.

Relatively quiet life

Even during such large-scale wars as World War II, there were people who led completely safe lives. Of course, there were countries that supported neutrality, but this is not so much about them. Representatives of the highest echelons of power of all the warring sides did not suffer particularly in poverty even during the most difficult periods of the war. Even in besieged Leningrad, the city leadership received food parcels that they could only dream of in more well-fed regions.

Having gone through war is a habit of violence. It is formed and clearly manifested during hostilities and continues to exist for a long time after their end, leaving an imprint on all aspects of life. IN extreme situations When a person is faced with death, he begins to look at himself completely differently and the world. Everything that filled his daily life suddenly becomes unimportant; a new, completely different meaning of his existence is revealed to the individual.

Many people develop such qualities as superstition and fatalism during war. If superstition does not manifest itself in all individuals, then fatalism is the main feature of the psychology of a military man. It consists of two opposite sensations. The first is the confidence that the person will not be killed anyway. The second is that sooner or later the bullet will find him. Both of these sensations form the soldier’s fatalism, which after the first battle is fixed in his psyche as a worldview. This fatalism and the superstitions associated with it become a defense against the stress that is every battle, dulling fear and unloading the psyche.

War, with its conditions of chronic danger of losing health or life every minute, with the conditions of not only impunity, but also encouraged destruction of other people, forms in a person new qualities necessary in wartime. Such qualities cannot be formed in peacetime, but in combat conditions they are revealed in the shortest possible time. In battle, it is impossible to hide your fear or show feigned courage. Courage either completely leaves the fighter, or manifests itself in its entirety. So are the highest manifestations of the human spirit in Everyday life happen rarely, but during war they become a mass phenomenon.

In a combat situation, situations often arise that place too high demands on the human psyche, which can cause sudden pathological changes in the individual’s psyche. So, along with heroism, military brotherhood and mutual assistance in war, robberies, torture, cruelty to prisoners, sexual violence against the population, robbery and looting on enemy soil are not uncommon. To justify such actions, the formula “war will write off everything” is often used and responsibility for them in the minds of the individual is shifted from him to the surrounding reality.

Features of life at the front have a strong influence on the human psyche: frost and heat, lack of sleep, malnutrition, lack of normal housing and comfort, constant overwork, lack of sanitary and hygienic conditions. Like the fighting itself, extremely tangible inconveniences in life are irritants of unusually great strength, forming the special psychology of a person who has gone through war.