Stalingrad

Stalingrad


On a cold day in January 2006, I found myself at Sawjelowskaya Station in Moscow, taking a train to Sheremetevo Airport for a flight to Volgograd, the new name of Stalingrad. I had arrived by train via Riga and St. Petersburg, and spent a few days losing myself in the crowds in Moscow, with the inevitable Red Square and the Kremlin, the crowded subways and the big avenues of the city centre. A small apartment in a modest part of the town made me feel at least a little Russian, and a shopping excursion to the neighborhood super market made me feel modestly proud of my elementary Russian, which the “natives” at least appeared to understand. The apartment was very basic to me, but in Russia a lot of things seem basic, and one wonders why in the West we bother with so many futile matters. In any case this apartment, the kvartiera, had what it takes to be a place to live. A bed, some easy chairs with doubtful covers, a kitchen with a refrigerator, a gas stove, hot water, some kitchen ustensils, cups, glasses, plates and, knives, forks and spoons. And the bathroom had a hot shower, and the ever present “S” of bent pipes very practical for drying small laundry. And a TV with a couple of foreign channels to wile away the late evening. And all this for a reasonable price! My home is my castle!

Facing a large square, Sawjelowskaya Station is a building that in the early days of railroads must have represented the prestige and glamour that went with the novelty of railroad travel, faces a big square. A busy traffic intersection, several Metro exits and hawker stalls and shops that must have looked temporary since decennia’s. In one of those rickety buildings I had found a ticketing office. No small feat, because it is stashed away in a corner of the square, small, almost hidden. Once inside, I found myself standing in a small room, behind the leather clad backs of swarthy men from the south, counting thick wads of banknotes on one of the three small desks, manned by a solid looking Russian woman. The old regime only reluctantly allowed their citizens to travel. If you wanted to travel at all, there had to be a real need for it, so why should you not have to work for it? These were no travel palaces like in our world, where colorful advertisements sell dreams of sandy beaches and palm trees facing a deep blue ocean. Here just a simple rundown ticket shop stashed away in the corner of a square.

From Sawjelowskaya Station, a fast and surprisingly modern and comfortable train took me out of the city centre, through dense suburbs, full of factories and railway yards. In a frozen river port I saw a few big yachts, waiting for their tycoon owners and better days in the cold embrace of the Russian winter. The snow was yellowish, in the fading light of the day. Surprisingly the monotony all of a sudden was interrupted by a small suburb with brightly painted houses. The blue, yellow and red buildings standing out like flowers that cannot await spring but already now pierce the dirty snow. Near a small station, a busy market had drawn many visitors. From the train, that did not stop, I could see a dense crowd milling around long tables loaded with what looked like carpets and clothes and spare parts and furniture. Farther away, the goods are on the ground, with a few people standing around, stamping their boots in the snow against the cold. It seemed there was a vendor for every separate piece of cloth offered for sale.

The train stopped at what seemed a recently built modern station in a small town. It is from here that a bus will take me to the airport nearby. On the square in front of the station, every available space was taken up by people selling something. Again a market where many different goods were for sale, and although it is winter, I saw vegetables and fruits too. From the surrounding buildings long and heavy icicles shone in the late sunlight. The snow is compacted to form a second layer of pavement, and it takes a big step to climb up to it after crossing the street, which is made ice-free.

After some inquiries, I found the right bus, and after a 10 minutes drive I reached the airport. Again that simplicity in everything. Not a post modern simplicity that is an art in itself. It is the simplicity of neglect. I noticed that I was surprised that the glass entrance doors do not open automatically. The pale green walls made the long departure hall resemble a hospital. Security checks were businesslike but polite. Also the shoes had to be taken off, and were carefully examined. Papers were checked a few times, and I saw that some passengers were taken into a small office for further checking. Somebody explained to me later, that in those offices rubles change hands to speed up real or imagined problems with papers. A policeman has to live too. And the people who have to pay up, seemed to accept it as one would accept a rain shower during a barbecue; unpleasant enough, but just one of those things…...

When an hour later, the plane took off, darkness was slowly spreading over the snowy fields outside Moscow. The sun was setting in flaming orange in a dark haze of pollution as I looked into the distance to the south west, the direction from where Napoleon had once come, and later the German army. I realized that my flight to Volgograd would take only a few hours, over a country side, frozen in winter, muddy in spring and autumn, and dry and dusty in the short hot summers. A countryside that has consumed and digested armies and inhabitants, noblemen and serfs alike. The noise of the jet added to the din of war and revolution that, I am sure, must still be echoing in the fields below. In such moments I can almost feel the passing of the centuries, in which we, as a random group of passengers in this aeroplane, also have our role to play. We came, we passed, and we disappeared. It gave me a feeling of satisfaction and peace, to be part of the world, of its history, and very much “here” and “now”.

It was pitch dark when the plane landed in Volgograd. It came to a stop in front of a large terminal building. Surprisingly, for someone accustomed to western Europe’s distances, there were no customs and police formalities. We had flown a few hours, but of course we were still in Russia. The passengers walked to the side of the building, where a small door in an iron fence gave access to a dark space where people waited to meet the arriving passengers, and where the luggage would be distributed. Here I met Igor, a 25 year old I had come to know from the internet, who shook my hand as if we had met recently. He immediately handed me a sheaf of papers with information about the city, and a visitor’s guide to the battle memorial. A few moments later we were in a marshrutka, one of the ever present minibuses of the Russian cities. The airport is far from the city, in Gumrak, a place heavy with history and death and destruction. After Pitomnik, the main airfield of the besieged army fell to the Russians, it was here that the last scant supplies arrived, and it was from here that the wounded soldiers found their last hope to be flown out to safety. Here airplanes were destroyed on the ground, or shot down while landing. Thousands and thousands of soldiers lay dying in the inadequate hospitals, where wounded were freezing to death, crammed into unheated tents.

These images crossed my mind while I was sitting in the marshrutka with silent people, speeding through the night. Every now and then someone would say something. The bus would stop at the road side, a passenger would get out, slam the sliding door shut, and disappear into the dark. After a good half hour, more lights started to appear, and finally we drove along the wide avenues of the city. Then it was our turn to get out and I found myself on what appeared to be Prospekt Lenina, at the corner of Ulitsa Alleya Geroev, Heroes’ Ally. The wide streets were lined with solid buildings. In the cold early evening, people were doing some shopping, before heading home from work.

A short walk brought me to Hotel Volgograd, where Igor had booked a room for me. The old, Soviet style hotel was comfortable enough, and the good looking young ladies at the counter were efficient and friendly. Igor took leave, and left to catch a bus home, to the modern satellite city of Volzjski, 25 km away, at the other side of Volga. He is one of those young Russians who carry the promise of changing times. He studies at the Volgograd Academy of Public Administration, and like so many of his generation has access to the world via internet and some excursions to the sunshine of the Mediterranean. As part of his studies he currently works at a large public utility. He has gathered some information about the town for me. The city plan he brought allows me to compare my surroundings with the drawings of battle situations I already have.

After a dinner in what looks to be the place to be in Volgograd, with a snappily dressed crowd of young people who can afford the stiff prices, I withdraw to my hotel room, with my books and maps. Only now I fully realize that I am in Stalingrad, at the very edge of Europe, 3000 km from home. Sixty four years ago, the frenzy of war and the obsessions of a few people, brought a million men here, to fight to the death. Again reading the accounts of the battle, and seeing the now familiar names on the maps, I have the same physical experience of shock and emotion I felt when I stood on the Altmarkt in Dresden. The towns have been rebuilt, entirely, because there was nothing left to repair, but the dead have a real presence, and the suffering has NOT left these places. It took a long time to fall asleep.

The next morning Igor will accompany me to the site of Mamaev Kurgan, the main memorial of the battle. Before he arrives, I visit the Heroes’ Alley, next to the hotel. Comparing maps and recent city plans, I realize that I stand on the former Red Square, with at the opposite end of this parklike space, the massive building of the Univermag, the department store in the cellars of which Von Paulus, the 6th Army commander, had his headquarters until the very end of the battle, on the 1st of February, 1943. At the western end, in front of a sober memorial of red granite, burns an eternal flame. To the east, the park narrows and slopes down to the Volga river, maybe 500 hundred meters away. Where the space opens to the river bank, wide stairs give the site a distinct Soviet look at the site, while pseudo Greek pillars and street lanterns that look vaguely like those one would find in Paris. Surprisingly, at the other side of the dark grey river, I see no buildings. The town stops at the Volga, and it seems our world ends here too. From behind the river, the rising sun makes the details of the waterfront stand out very clearly. On my right, a river port sits dark and foreboding on the waterfront. It is here that the ferries brought reinforcements to the besieged Russians in Stalingrad. Losses during the crossing, which was always under fire from the Germans, were staggering, and often only one out of three soldiers would reach the town, only to join the deadly battle with little chances of survival.

Igor arrived, and we took a marshrutka to Mamaev Hill. It was only a few degrees below zero, and the sun shone in a blue sky, but a strong wind made it chilly. Mamaev Hill is in fact a “kurgan”, an ancient grave hill on the high west bank of the river. The kurgans, of which a great number are strewn across the vast reaches of the plains of Southern Russia, are silent witnesses of the great migrations that crossed this ocean of grass…. From the East, with the rising sun, and with a great sound of thundering horses, Sarmathes, Alanes, Chazars, Huns, Mongols arrived, conquered, and stayed for centuries, before being overrun themselves. But this time, it was from the West that disaster arrived. First, in September 1942, the German 6th Army, came within sight of the city, and reached the Volga at Rynok, just north of the city. Then – history gathers speed as it approaches us - in November of the same year, the Russians, after haven broken through the German front at the Don, 100 km away, also approached from the west. Initially, for both sides, Stalingrad had only a limited strategic importance. For the Germans, who far away to the south, had pushed on to the Caucasus and the oil fields of Baku, Stalingrad was needed to guard the long front to the north and north-east. For the Russians, Stalingrad could function as an operational centre to contain the German armies. But the real drama unfolded, when the leaders of these political systems of utter evil chose Stalingrad as the place to prove their superiority over the other. As a result, the price both paid in loss of life far exceeded the REAL strategic value of the place. For Hitler a victory at Stalingrad – the town which bore the name of Russia’s leader - would once and for all prove the superiority of the Arian race, and the National Socialist political system over the hated Slavs with their Communist ideology. Stalin knew that a victory would give hope for the Russian people that the war could be won, and a justification for the millions of deaths his bloody dictatorship in the 1930’s and incompetent handling of the war so far had caused so far. The German attack on the country probably saved his regime. The shrewd Stalin saw how a combination of the innate love of the Russian for his native soil with his incomparable capacity to bear suffering, could not lose against a German army, fighting far from home, and, albeit competent and efficient, more and more demoralized in the unforgiving Russian winter.

We got out at the low end of the vast memorial complex at Mamaev Hill, just a few meters from the Volga. At both sides, a low wall contains square granite boxes with the sacred earth of the declared Hero cities of the Soviet Union. Kursk, Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Sebastopol, Odessa, Tula, Novorossiisk, Kerch, Smolensk, Murmansk and the Brest Fortress. Witnesses of as many battles and countless deaths… A massive sculpted structure guards the entrance to the complex. It depicts a procession, men and women and a child, carrying wreaths and oak leaves, as symbol of glory. A few flights of stairs bring us up to the level of the Poplar Alley, a 200 meter long alley of concrete, lined with poplars. The slender trees draw our attention to the now visible giant statue of mother Russia, on top of Mamaev Hill, a kilometer away. Walking on, the giant statue gradually disappears behind a 16 meter high statue representing a soldier, carrying a grenade and a sub-machine gun (and not much else), surging from the stone, facing the enemy, and ready to fight to the death. The traits are heavy, square and true to Soviet tradition of larger than life reality. I reflect that the men fighting on this ground would not often have had time for feelings of patriotism. Killing instead of being killed, rage, and self preservation leave little space for noble and romantic notions. But then, are memorials to honor the dead? Or do they carry a message for the living? The man running a small hawker stall nearby, has similar worries. Survive by making a living, selling pitiful war souvenirs, cartridges, Red Army buttons and flags … but for now, just trying to keep warm….

Still, the place is impressive. The light is hard and almost colorless. The wind rustles the leaves of the poplars, whispering sounds, haunted. A train passes underneath the alley, the noise swelling and subsiding. As if life comes and goes, literally underneath the memories.

After the statue of the soldier, again in full view of Mother Russia, a few steps lead us between two structures, deliberately evoking a battle damaged city street. The architect responsible for the complex visited Stalingrad immediately after the battle, in February 1943. Streets and squares had disappeared, all that remained was a landscape of smoking rubble. The two walls, each about 50 meters long and up to 17 meters high, depict these ruins. Soldiers, half hidden in broken masonry, bullet holes and fragments, inscriptions and broken masonry and a hidden loudspeaker which plays wartime songs, alternating with brief spoken bulletins of the Russian radio at that time: “… we are fighting for every street, for every house…”

On summer days, masses or visitors from all over the former Soviet Union crowd these spaces. Now, only a few visitors brave the cold. I notice a group of soldiers, smallish boys in camouflage, with eager faces under their fur “ushanka”… They do not object when I ask them to make a photograph… they look into the lens with self-confidence, like priests who find it normal to be photographed in front of “their” St. Peter in Rome.

Walking on, we come into “Hero’s Square”, a vast space around a large rectangular pool, now frozen solid. The pool is lined with imposing statues, representing heroic attitudes. On the left-hand side of the square is a wall in the form of an immense, unfurled banner, on which are the words:

"An iron wind was blowing in their faces, but on they came. Once more the enemy was gripped by fear: was it mere men who were attacking them? Were they mortal?"

The far end of the square reaches the foot of the actual Mamaev Hill. A heavy concrete wall is covered with a bas-relief showing moments of the battle, and finally, a relaxed group of Russian soldiers, celebrating, above a group of German prisoners, looking dejected and visibly wanting to be somewhere else. They had every reason to. Of the 90.000 Germans who survived the battle and were taken prisoner, only some 5000 returned home, some as late as 1955. In the wall a large rectangular opening, framed by heavy pillars giving it a distinct Egyptian style, gives access to the heart of the complex, the Hall of Valour. Coming from the bright exterior, the dark passage prepares you for the view that awaits you. A vast round space with golden walls, and in gold letters on red stone banners, the names of tens of thousands of fallen soldiers. In the middle, a giant hand, surrounded by flowers, holds an eternal flame. Solemn music – ironically Schubert – gives a feeling of being in a cathedral. A non-religious cathedral, not built for a God, but for a system, where the state is God, and soldiers his angels. Above the flame, an opening in the roof is surrounded by the red and green ribbon of the Defence of Stalingrad Medal. Two guards stand rigidly at attention. Some visitors line the walls, talking with hushed voices. This vast Hall is half built into the hillside, and has become part of the kurgan where men have been buried for thousands of years. Mamaev Kurgan……a hill that is a tomb and a tomb that is a hill. For every name on the walls, a hundred men, unknown, blown to pieces, are buried in this soil as if to copy the burial rituals of those old times. Men and horses, buried, and the wind blowing over the hill, and the plains as it does here, though the Hall of Valour.


On the hour, heavy footsteps approach through the access tunnel. Changing of the guard. A small detachment of soldiers, led by an officer. They march with heavy, martial steps. Stretched legs, boots hitting the granite floor with a loud noise, arms folding, stopping a moment in front of the chest, faces staring into nowhere. Machines, not human at all. They approach the guard standing at attention, and in a swift moment two men step out to replace them. The detachment then steps past us. Heavy, heavy steps that resound in the vast space. They move up the winding slope, towards the exit, one level above the entrance. During their slow progress, questions race through my mind, and different emotions seem to tumble over each other. Should we admire? Do we see heroism or the extreme limits of human stupidity? Should we bow our head and remember the sacrifice or should we raise fists and cry out our indignation for this vast murder?

When I stand in the exit of the hall, I follow with my eyes the oblique shaft of sunlight that enters the dark space like a searchlight. It strikes a part of the floor, the red and white flowers around the giant hand holding the flame, and the head and shoulders of one of the guards, making him seem to float on the surface of a bottomless well. The beam will move around the hall as the sun will continue its course, striking the flame, the flowers, the golden walls, and the names on the banners, as if searching for a truth. But there are no answers here, only questions. We can build memorials; we can travel to the other end of the world, only to find out that the only answers are within us, in our hearts.

The sun and the wind hit us like a brick wall, when we emerged from the hall, and started the last climb towards the Mother Russia statue. She looms above us, impressive and contradictory in the concrete flowing of her dress. The path zigzags, and its movement now brings the sun in our faces, then throws long shadows ahead of us. After the heavy atmosphere of the hall, the air seems lighter although the cold is intense. The wind hammers at us as if we can only reach the top of the hill at a price, and it is almost impossible to stand motionless to make a photograph. Mother Russia engulfs us, but does not take away the cold…. She stretches out her arms, one holding a sword, the other in a pleading gesture, as if to call those in the back to come and join. She does not look at the enemy; she looks at those people behind her with a stern face. A woman in arms. What does it mean? Are there no men to do the fighting? Are they dead already? With this woman looking at you, it is very clear that there can be no running away from the battle. Here we don’t see a mother protecting her children, but someone making clear to you that you are expected to do your part. But her solid and generous body also has another message. The sword will bring struggle and death, the body, the solid, wide hips, will bring life and the generous breasts will sustain it. But standing at her feet, some 80 meters below the tip of her sword, it is impossible to see these arms, the face and the woman’s body. You can just feel her presence, and with the sun in your back, see her imposing shadow reach over the land. Mother Russia, seen from far away, will impress you, and also invite you to form your opinions. She is overwhelming, greater than life, and she invites you to know more about her. But from nearby, at her feet, in the cold wind and the hard light, all you can do is feel her presence.

The landscape around me, although lit by the winter sun, has a strange absence of color, broken only by the blue sky and the bright blue ribbon of the Volga, to the East, not more than a kilometer away, and too, the golden domes of the recently built church nearby. My thoughts go back almost 50 years, to when, as a schoolboy, I read the books of Theodor Plievier: ‘Moscow’, ‘Stalingrad’, ‘Berlin’. After reading these books, I understood that regardless of who wins, battles cause endless suffering and real death. I realized for the very first time, that evil exists and that it can appear in many shapes. To me, the name Stalingrad became synonymous with growing up, with facing the world. I realized that I would also meet evil, and I knew from that moment that life is an adventure, full of dangers and struggles, with inevitable death at the end. It also made me doubt about the existence of the God I had heard about as a child. And, I decided, that one day I would see Stalingrad. Since those days, I had left home, seen the world and done the things I wanted to do. And now, I had realized a dream and fulfilled a promise, made the the voyage, and in a way, reached the end of my journey.

After Mamaev Kurgan, we visited the nearby Pavlov house, and the Stalingrad war museum. The broken shell of the Pavlov house stands only a few meters from the Volga. The massive building stares back at you from it’s empty windows. It stares, but does not see us, just like we look, and see, but cannot comprehend. Under the command of a sergeant Pavlov, this building held out for two months against the attacks of the Germans:

……. Pavlov’s men smashed through cellar walls, to improve their communications and cut holes in the walls, to make better firing points for their machine-guns and long-barreled anti-tank rifles. Whenever panzers approached, Pavlov’s men scattered, either to the cellar or top floor, from where they were able to engage the Germans at close range. The panzer crews could not elevate their main armament sufficiently to fire back…..


Several times the Germans penetrated the building. At times, the Russians and Germans would occupy different floors. In hand to hand fighting, with everything from guns to bayonets and infantry spades, the invaders were thrown out again. Marshal Chuikov later remarked that the Germans lost more men at the Pavlov house, than during the capture of Paris. Jakob Pavlov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war, he became a priest, and attracted many people as Archimandrite Kyrill in the Monastery at Sergievo, formerly Zagorsk, not far from Moscow.

Next to the Pavlov House, a round building houses the painted panorama of the Stalingrad battle. A vast painting puts together some of the more well known episodes of the battle, including the surrender of the German commanders. We climb small stairs to reach a platform, from where the 16 x 120 meter panorama can be viewed. A group of Russians, visibly impressed, listens silently to the guide, who points at different scenes with a small light beam. Downstairs a vast museum houses the usual objects of war and battle; guns, uniforms, portraits, decorations, the remnants of battle and history. I find it difficult to concentrate on what I see. The war, which in the open air, in the cold and the wind seemed so real, is here reduced to glass cases full of objects. A uniform coat with bullet holes has become an attraction, the man who wore it long dead. The museum has no windows, and the long concrete and granite halls somehow evoke death and burial without glory. After the visit to Mamaev Kurgan, I feel saturated with images and emotions, and I am happy to be outside again, on a platform overlooking the Volga, maybe 100 meters away. A few fighter planes and tanks are facing the river, to the East, as if to say again that the war is won.

The next day the weather has changed. Grey clouds hang low above the river and the city, and from time to time a light snow falls, covering the streets, buildings and parks. I walk around in the city. Massive buildings line the broad avenues, and a fancy fair stands forlorn in the square facing the hotel. A big sign with C НОЫМ ГОДОМ wishes me a Happy New Year, and SAMSUNG seems to be willing very much to sell me a TV set. Along Lenin Avenue a small street market offers clothing for sale. The women are mostly elderly, standing in the snow, stamping their boots to stay warm. Shops are open and I notice that several of them are well stocked with articles for newborn and small children. A hopeful sign in a city that does not immediately bring love and marriage and childbirth to mind. The world and time did not stop, that 1st of February 1943, when silence replaced the continuous thunder of the battle. The eternal flame in the Heroes Alley in front of the hotel, has received an armed honor guard of teenage schoolchildren, boys and girls, in black uniform. They are standing motionless in the falling snow. Their faces earnest and serious. When they change the guard, I notice that their steps are still light and lack the severity of those of the soldiers in the Hall of Valour. Their presence tells me that memories in this country are kept alive. Heroes’ Alley is not just a name. The young people guarding the flame show that the pride of these people for their victory is very real and heart felt. Different from the institutionalized pride the imposing Mother Russia on Mamaev Hill seems to throw at your face, whether you like it or not.

All through the day, temperatures have been around -5 to -10 degrees. Not very low for this time of year in this place. During the night however, a cold front has crept over the city, and when the next morning I come down to the lobby of the hotel, to take a taxi to the airport, a sign above the door indicates minus 26 degrees. Nobody however seems to notice anything special, and people walk in and out of the hotel the same way as before. The taxi, a Lada that has seen better times, arrives at the agreed time, and a little later I ride through the snowy streets of Volgograd. The car windows are opaque with frost and condensation, and the driver has made a peep hole the size of a handkerchief. A scary experience, but fortunately the pace of the traffic around us is very slow. Once outside the city, on the way to the airport, I see that the ground is not so flat as it seemed, and we pass through some “balka’s”, the gullies that are mentioned so often in the war stories. I arrive well in time at the airport which seems almost deserted. But maybe half an hour before departure time other passengers arrive, and a short while later I am on the Aeroflot plane to Moscow.

When the plane gathers speed, and then slowly climbs away from the city, I look down on the white fields below. The scars of war are made invisible by time and snow. I fly away and think that in those times this would have been an impossible dream for hundreds of thousands of men – to fly away from the hunger and the pain and the danger. To fly away from death. Stalingrad disappears behind us, the promise I made to myself as a boy has been fulfilled. And the confrontation with so much death, brings about the realization that for me there is still a good deal of life to be lived.


Quotations from:

“Stalingrad” by Anthony Beevor
Pinguin Books