Finished VASILI TYORKIN: A BOOK ABOUT A SOLDIER (1942-1945), a series of poetic vignettes printed in army newspapers featuring a mythic, commonplace Russian soldier by Alexander Tvardovsky (1910-1971), who himself was a soldier in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War against the German Nazis. The poems were popular with Russian soldiers, who believed Vasili Tyorkin was a real person. Vasili was the quintessential soldier: heroic when necessary, modest about his feats, which included shooting down a German plane with his rifle, a morale booster among his fellow soldiers with his humor and patriotism, sentimental and kind when interacting with civilians (he fixed the clock of an elderly couple), especially those who reminded him of his home village, stubborn when facing death. His American counterpart would be the soldiers portrayed in Bill Mauldin’s “Willie and Joe” comics and Ernie Pyle’s dispatches during World War II or the NCOs in the “Band of Brothers” series. The English edition has both Russian verse and the English translation on the facing page. Noted authors Ivan Bunin and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn admired the book for its heartfelt authenticity. Most of the poems are in 4-line stanzas, translated with imperfect rhymes.
8 million Russian soldiers died in WWII (see Catherine Merridale’s IVAN’S WAR for what life was like in the Red Army). As historian Carleton Gregory explains in RUSSIA: THE STORY OF WAR, it is difficult for Americans to understand the Russian propensity for war that enables it to cope with the social impact of such catastrophic casualties. VASILI TYORKIN fed into the mindset promoting the mythic Russian hero, “this book about a fighting man…a sad and valiant fighter.” There were, indeed, occasions when Russian soldiers did Vasili Tyorkinish kind deeds. Tank driver Dmitry Loza in COMMANDING THE RED ARMY'S SHERMAN TANKS described a time he used his tank to plow the fields for a poor village so the women could do their spring planting. However, Tvardovsky’s epic omitted (understandably) the darker side of life in the Red Army, such as the political commissars sending supposed malcontents (such as Solzhenitsyn) and Russian POWs to the Gulag and the Red Army’s rape of millions of Soviet, Polish, and German women.