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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Russian writers on war
Mikhail Sholokhov: People worse than wolves. And it was called a heroic exploit.
Mikhail Sholokhov: Visit to a military hospital
Mikhail Sholokhov: War’s bitter harvest
Mikhail Sholokhov: Who was he calling for in his hour of death?
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Mikhail Sholokhov
From And Quite Flows the Don (1928-32)
Translated by Stephen Garry
The Cossacks listened with unflagging attention to the speeches of a sergeant and a little rank-and-file Cossack. The latter had difficulty in giving vent to his angry feelings:
“Cossacks! This isn’t good enough! They’ve mucked everything up again! They’re trying to make fools of us! If there’s been a revolution and all the people have been given their freedom, they ought to stop the war. Do the people and us Cossacks want war? Am I right?”
“You’re right!”
“We can’t keep our trousers up over our bottoms! And is that what they call war?”
“Down with the war! Let’s go back home.”
***
“When I was a lad I used to climb up on the stove in winter-time, and my grandmother (she was a hundred years old then) would search for lice in my hair with her fingers, and tell me: ‘My little Maxsim, my darling! In the old days people didn’t live like they do now; they lived well, lawfully, and nobody dared attack them. But you, my little child, will live to see a time when all the earth is covered with wire, and birds will iron noses will fly through the air and peck at the people as a rook pecks at a watermelon. And then will be hunger and plague among men, brother will rise against brother, and son against father. The people will be left like grass after a fire.’” Grazianov paused a moment, then continued: “Well, it’s all come to pass as she said it would. They’ve invented the telegraph, and there’s your wire. And the iron birds are aeroplanes. And there’ll be a famine, all right. My own folk have only sown half their land during these years, and there’s little left of the reserve stocks. Everywhere it’s the same. And if the harvest fails you’ll have your hunger.”
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The front extended a little further to the west. There the armies breathed in a mortal fever; there was a shortage of military supplies, of food. With innumerable hands the soldiers reached out to the phantasmal word “peace.” In the armies a ripened anger flowed and bubbled like water in a spring…
***
The two officers walked back to the centre of the city and took leave of each other.
“We mustn’t lose sight of each other, Eugene,” Kalmikov said as he shook hands. “Difficult times are coming! Keep you feet on the ground, or you’ll be lost!”
As Listnitsky walked away Kalmikov called after him:
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. You remember Merkulov – the artist fellow?”
“Yes?”
“He was killed in May. Quite unexpectedly. You couldn’t have seen a more silly death. A grenade burst in the hands of a patrol and blew off the man’s arms at the elbow, while all we found of Merkulov, who was at his side, was part of his entrails. For three years death spared him…”
He shouted something else, but his words raised the grey dust and brought only the ends of his words to Listnitsky’s ears. Eugene waved his hand and strode away, giving an occasional glance back.
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