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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Russian writers on war
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Mikhail Sholokhov
From And Quite Flows the Don (1928-32)
Translated by Stephen Garry
Within an hour the entire company rode out to where the German officer lay. The Cossacks removed his boots, clothing, and weapons and crowded around to look at the young, frowning, yellow face of the dead man. One of them managed to capture the officer’s watch and sold it on the spot to his troop sergeant. In a pocket-book they found a few coins, a letter, a lock of flaxen hair, and a photograph of a girl with a proud, smiling mouth.
Afterwards the incident was transformed into a heroic exploit. Kruchkov, a favourite of the company commander, told his story and received the Cross of St. George. His comrades remained in the shadow. The hero was sent to the divisional staff headquarters, where he lived in clover until the end of the war, receiving three more crosses because influential women and officers came from Petersburg and Moscow to look at him. The ladies “ah’d” and “oh’d,” the ladies regaled the Don Cossack with expensive cigarettes and chocolates. At first he cursed them by all the devils, but afterwards, under the benevolent influence of the staff toadies in officers’ uniforms, he made a remunerative business of it. He told the story of his “exploit,” laying the colours on thick and lying without a twinge of conscience, while the ladies went into raptures and stared admiringly at the pock-marked, brigand face of the Cossack hero.
The Czar visited headquarters, and Kruchkov was taken to be shown to him. The sleepy Emperor looked Kruchkov over as if he were a horse, blinked his heavy eyelids, and slapped the Cossack on the back.
“Good Cossacks lad!” he remarked, and turning to his suite, he asked for some Seltzer water.
Kruchkov’s shaggy head was continually pictured in the newspapers and journals. There was a Kruchkov brand of cigarettes. The merchants of Nizhnii-Novgorod presented him with a gold-mounted firearm.
And what really happened? Men had clashed on the field of death and, embraced by mortal terror, had fought, struck, inflicted blind blows on one another, wounded one another’s horses; then they turned and fled, frightened by a shot which had killed one of their number. They had ridden away mortally mutilated.
And it was called a heroic exploit.
***
After his first battle Grigori Melekhov was tormented by a dreary inward pain. He grew noticeably thin, lost weight, and frequently, whether attacking or resting, sleeping or waking, he saw the features and form of the Austrian whom he had killed by the railings. In his sleep he lived again and again through that first battle and even felt the shuddering convulsion of his right hand clutching the lance. He would wake and drive the dream off violently, shading his painfully screwed-up eyes with his hand.
The cavalry trampled down the ripened grain and left their hoof-prints as though hail had rattled all over Galicia. The soldiers’ heavy boots trampled the roads, scratched the macadam, churned up the August mud. The gloomy face of the earth was pock-marked with shells; fragments of iron and steel tore into it, yearning for human blood. At night ruddy flickerings lit up the horizon: trees, villages, towns were flaming like summer lightning. In August – when fruits ripen and grain is ready for harvest – the wind-swept sky was unsmilingly grey, the rare fine days were oppressive and sultrily steaming.
August declined to its close. The leaves turned an oily yellow in the orchards, and a mournful purple flooded the stalks. From a distance it seemed as though the trees were rent with wounds and streaming with blood.
Grigori studied with interest the changes that occurred in his comrades. Prokhor Zykov returned from hospital with the marks of a horseshoe on his cheek, and pain and bewilderment lurking in the corner of his lips. His calfish eyes blinked more than ever. Yegor Zharkov lost no opportunity of cursing and swearing, was more bawdy than ever, and imprecated everything under the sun. Yemelian Groshev, a serious and efficient Cossack from Grigori’s own village, seemed to char; his face turned dark, and he laughed awkwardly and morosely. Changes were to be observed in every face; each was inwardly nursing and rearing the iron seeds implanted by the war, and the young Cossacks were wilting and drooping like the stalks of mown grass.
***
The detachment was drawn up in the yard. The other Cossacks returned to their bath, being joined soon after by the new arrivals. Grigori dropped down at his brother’s side. The damp, crumbling clay of the dam smelt raw and deathly. He sat killing the bloodless, flaccid lice in the folds and hems of his shirt and told his brother:
“Piotra, I’m dead in spirit. I’m like a man all but killed. As though I’d been between millstones; they’ve crushed me and spat me out.” His voice was complainingly high-pitched, and the furrows (only now, with a feeling of anxiety, did Piotra notice them) darkened and streamed across his forehead.
“Why, what’s the matter?” Piotra asked as he pulled off his shirt, revealing his bare white body with the clean-cut line of sunburn around the neck.
“It’s like this,” Grigori said hurriedly, and his voice grew strong in its bitterness. “They’ve set us fighting one another, but they don’t come themselves. The people have become worse than wolves. Evil all around you. I think to myself that if I were to bite a man he’d go mad.”
“Have you had to – kill someone?”
“Yes,” Grigori almost shouted, screwing up his shirt and throwing it underfoot. Then he sat clutching with his fingers as his throat as though choking with a stranded word and gazed aside.
“Tell me!” Piotra ordered, avoiding his brother’s eyes.
“My conscience is killing me. I sent my lance through one man – in hot blood – I couldn’t have done otherwise…But why did I cut down the other?”
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