Soviet War Poetry

[Zoya]

I have enjoyed reading some of the Russian WWII war poetry, which differs a lot from the WWI poets, such as Owen, Sassoon etc. Whereas these and other WWI poets focused on the horror/injustice of war, the Russian war poets focused more on patriotic glory, the glorious Motherland, the honour of fighting and dying for Mother Russia etc. The style is very different.

Here are some examples:

It's not for us to calmly rot in graves.
We'll lie stretched out in our half-open coffins
And hear before the dawn the cannon coughing,
The regimental bugle calling gruffly
From highways which we trod, our land to save.

We know by heart all rules and regulations.
What's death to us? A thing that we despise.
Lined up in graves, our dead detachment lies
Awaiting orders. And let generations
To come, when talking of the dead, be wise;
Dead men have ears and eyes for truth and lies.

Nicolai Mayorov

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
In February 1942 Nikolai Mayorov, political instructor of a machine-gun company, died in action in Smolensk Region.


ODESSA, CITY MINE!

We rose at dawn,
When night crept close to day.
The wind that blew was fresh and light
and fitful,

A little briny and a little bitter.
As on an open palm the sea before us lay,
With fishing boats its surface strewn,
the advent

Of morning marking....
Under foam-washed boulders
(Quite large they were and black and sleek
and shiny),

Beneath dark sea-weed, butter-soft and slimy,
The bullheads moved their bulky tops, and twisted
Their narrow tails.
The ship to the horizon
Was firmly glued.
The sparkle of the rising
Sun hurt the eyes.
The contours of the misty
Shores were a trifle vague and undefined.
We`ll not surrender you, Odessa, city mine!
Let death walk every street;
With hoarse and choking sound,
Let homes in flame go up and topple to the ground.

Let acrid smoke eat at our eyes, let bread
Give off the smell of powder and of lead -
Odessa, city mine,
My friend and comrade true,
Odessa, city mine,
We`ll not surrender you!

Vsevolod Bagritsky

1941 Translated by Irina Zheleznova
Vsevolod Bagritsky was fallen by an enemy bullet while jotting down some facts passed on to him by one of the men. This was on February 26, 1942, in the village of Dubovik, the Leningrad Region.


I am Goya
of the bare field, by the enemy’s beak gouged
till the craters of my eyes gape
I am grief

I am the tongue
of war, the embers of cities
on the snows of the year 1941
I am hunger

I am the gullet
of a woman hanged whose body like a bell
tolled over a blank square
I am Goya

O grapes of wrath!
I have hurled westward
the ashes of the uninvited guest!
and hammered stars into the unforgetting sky - like nails
I am Goya

Andrey Voznesensky

Translated by Stanley Kunitz
Voznesensky isn't a war poet in the truest sense, ie he wasn't in active service, having been born in 1933, but his memories of the war is the theme of this poem. He was denounced by Khrushchev in 1963, but in 1978 was awarded the USSR State Prize.

There aren't many war poems on the net, but you will find some more here: The Voice of Russia (CHAPTER DEVOTED TO THE SECOND WORLD WAR)

Related books:
The Road To The West - Sixty Soviet War Poems (rare)
Let the Living Remember: Soviet War Poetry (v. rare)

Hope this is of interest!
If you know of any more, please post them!

[Marina]

Very powerful, Zoya. Voznesensky's

'of a woman hanged whose body like a bell
tolled over a blank square'
will stick with me.

Marina

[Zoya]

How much I love them all
(and they will all be killed
All of them –
The company commanders
'Companeee, forward, follow the
co...'
(Their mouths will grow
numb).
These here, in the earth.

Yan Satunovsky
Kak ya ikh vsekh lyublyu [How Much I Love Them All... trans M. G.], 1942

My comrade, in your death-agony
Don't call your friends in vain!
Instead let me warm my palms
Over your steaming blood.

Don't you weep, don't moan,
You are no small child
You are not hurt, you have simply been killed.
Let me take off your boots as a keepsake,
For we shall yet have to advance.

Ion Degen
Moj tovarischtsch, v smertel'noj agonii...


Your crutches and your lethal perforating wound,
and the tombs over the Volga, where thousands of
young ones are lying, –
all this is our fate, she is what we argued and sang with...

But when we come back – and we will come back victorious,
all of us, stubborn as devils and tenacious and spiteful as men,
let them brew beer for us and fry meat for lunch,
to make the tables on oaken legs burst far and wide.

We shall bow low to our weary own people,
we shall smother our mothers and girlfriends with
kisses for having waited for us and kept their love,
when we come back, having obtained victory with our bayonets,
then we shall love everything to the end, my coeval,
and find ourselves trades.

Semyon Gudzenko
Nas ne nuzhno zhalet' [No Need to Pity Us – trans. M. G.], 1945

[Zoya]

Yay! I managed to track down a copy of Let the Living Remember at a more than reasonable price. For a book so rare I'm well pleased.

It's beautifully illustrated throughout, poems in English and Russian. Published in the USSR, 1976; I scanned some pages:

[Gotthard Heinrici]

If you look at the propaganda of the time Zoya, you will see that the regime was very careful to promote the idea of Mother Russia being fought for, rather than the ideology. They werent above using images of Tsarist Generals urging the troops on in propaganda posters. So its no surprise to see poems about the glory of Mother russia gaining popularity.

[Gotthard Heinrici]

Just found a Soviet propaganda site with posters that match this very theme!


Soviet Propaganda Art

[Zoya]

One of the pictures I scanned is on this page! Soviet Paintings and Sketches And some great photos here: Photos from World War II

[Zoya]

From the link in GH's thread about Kursk...
Kursk Page

Wait for me, and I'll return - only wait very hard;
Wait until you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain;
Wait when the wind sweeps the snowdrifts;
Wait in the sweltering heat;
Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays;
Wait when even from afar no letters come to you;
Wait even when others are tired of waiting;
Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more;
And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory,
Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too;
Wait, for I'll return, defying every death;
And let those who do not wait say I was lucky;
They will never understand that, in the midst of death,
You, with your waiting, saved me;
Only you and I will know how I survived -
It's because you waited as no one else did.

Konstantin Simonov, 1941