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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Russian writers on war
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Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
From The Golovlovs (1876)
Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew
In some four or five years he was completely bankrupt and was only too glad to volunteer for a military levy that was being raised at the time. However, his regiment had hardly reached Kharkov when peace was concluded and Stepan found himself back in Moscow once again. There, he found that his house had been sold in his absence. All he had on him was a rather shabby military uniform, regulation boots and a hundred rubles. He decided to invest this capital, that is, he started to play cards, and soon he lost everything.
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“…I’ve served my country, friend, and now everyone has to help me…And vodka’s good for my health, y-know – it loosens my cough. On the march to Sebastopol, friend, we’d put away a bucketful each before we even reached Serpukhov!”
“You must have been half-plastered with it?”
“Don’t remember. I suppose so. I got all the way to Kharkov and I’ll be damned if I can remember a thing. I only remember that we went through towns, oh, yes, and in Tula, I remember, the man who ran the army supply store made us a speech. He fairly wept, the sly pig! Yes, our Holy Mother Russia downed quite a bit of vodka for solace in those hard times. Suppliers, contractors, profiteers – it’s a wonder the country survived!”
“Ah, but remember, your own mamma now, she also made a tidy little profit out of it. More than half the conscripts from our village didn’t return, and they say they’ve ordered compensation to be paid out for each of them now. And that compensation’s worth more than four hundred a man.”
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“And what’s money for? What’s the filthy lucre for? If a hundred thousand’s too little, take two hundred thousand! When I have money, I don’t stint anything as long as I enjoy myself! Even then, I have to admit, I offered her three rubles through my corporal – five, the little robber wanted!”
“And, of course, you didn’t happen to have five?”
“Well, I don’t know how to put it. I tell you, it’s as if the whole thing were a dream. Maybe I even had her and I’ve forgotten. The entire march, for the whole two months…I don’t remember a thing! I suppose that’s never happened to you?”
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“Right, right. When we were on campaign, we never had any truck with tea or coffee. But vodka now – that’s sacred. Unscrew the top of the canteen, pour it out, drink it down – and there you are! At that time, they were driving us on fast, so fast that I went ten days without washing.”
“You’ve had a hard time, sir.”
“Hard? You just try tramping along that highway! And even so, going there wasn’t so bad – people came out to meet us, fed us meals, all the liquor we wanted. But coming back – oh, then they didn’t treat us anymore!”
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