Breaking new ground in Russian war literature, the book under review brings to light hundreds of newly discovered Anne Franks, whose diaries give us a disturbing account of the horrors of wartime life. Few will perhaps remain unmoved by the trauma these Soviet children recorded while reeling from cold and hunger as bombs crashed around them and their parents died. Scribbled by little fingers — some as ‘old’ as six or 12 — these diaries make you wonder whether some Iraqi or Syrian children are recording the horror of the torture they are being subjected to.

War is a phenomenon of which the military part is perhaps a quarter, the ultimate losers being non-combatants. Whether it is Alexander’s whirlwind march from Macedonia to Punjab, or Tamerlane’s conquests from Moscow to Delhi, or the Allied enforcement of Germany’s unconditional surrender, it is the civilians who pay for war in lives and materials — as is precisely the case today in half a dozen Muslim countries.

In WWII, the western part of the Eurasian landmass witnessed perhaps the most brutal phase of the titanic conflict in which civilian casualty figures remain controversial till this day. But, as Children of War informs us, in Leningrad alone only three per cent of the people died in artillery fire and bombing; 97pc died of starvation, including half of the city’s 400,000 children. The diarists shake you to the core with the spontaneity of their thoughts and words.

Discovered from time to time, some of them half a century later, the diaries have been compiled in book form by Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, and contain entries written in cities under enemy fire, on the front line, in ghettos, in occupied territories and sometimes in slave labour camps. Hunger and death dominate its pages. They overwhelm you with melancholia when you realise that thousands of children in the Levant are going through the same trauma today.

It is from Leningrad that we get to read some of the most heart-wrenching accounts of life during its 1,000-day siege. Cold was rarely mentioned. Here is Tanya Savicheva’s short diary: “Zhenya died Dec 28, at 12 midnight 1941; grandma died, Jan 25 at 3pm,” followed by four more deaths. The seventh line: “The Savichevas have died”, and the last line: “Only Tanya is left”. Such was the torment of hunger that when they shared their dreams, they were all about food. Dogs and cats ceased to be pets, they were stolen for eating; although the children didn’t know it, over 2,000 people were arrested for cannibalism.

Eleven-year old Yura Utekhin’s 19 entries — from Dec 23, 1941 to Feb 7, 1942 — are all about bread and food. Dec 25, 1941: “I woke up early this morning and found out that they have increased the bread ration … ”. Jan 20, 1941: “They have increased the bread for orphanages by 50g.” Jan 29, 1941: “This is the second day they have given us bread for breakfast.” Here is an entry by 16-year-old Borya Kapranov, an eighth grade student: “We started talking about our dreams. And they turned out to be alike, because everyone dreamed about bread or other foods. … We lay there talking like that until 7 o’clock. There was no light and it was too cold to get up. … People are collapsing in the street from hunger, and today the men from our room were asked to help carry a dead body.” Another entry, “The Germans dropped leaflets that said ‘Finish up the soybeans on the 6th, prepare your coffins on the 7th’”. Not all Germans were bad. Writes Zoya Khabarova in occupied Crimea, “the Germans greet us like good neighbours.”

A diary written by Marusya Yeryomina was discovered a decade later. Here is an entry from Oct 20, 1941: “Auntie Shura Frolova ... crying hysterically. This morning someone pinched all her food ration cards and she has three or four children to feed, as well as her mother”. And complains Maya Bubnova: “The water isn’t running. The radio is silent. The telephone doesn’t work. There isn’t any fuel in Leningrad. It’s 35 degrees Celsius”. She writes of a woman repeating: “The Germans won’t touch me, I’m not Jewish; my husband is not a communist.”

Fourteen-year-old Kapa Voznesenskaya regrets that Papa spilt some of the cabbage soup he brought on the tram. “Today somebody pinched 200g of bread from Papa in the canteen”. She concludes, “January has been no better than December for us. Grandma Grusha, Uncle Vasya and Aunt[s] Shura, Sima and Uncle Zhenya all died.”

Nine-year-old Tanya Rudykovoskaya had no choice but to be true to herself, for she writes about food and the death of her father in the same go: “Papa died. … Breakfast — peas porridge (thin), half a tbsp millet porridge. … Dinner was soup with buckwheat groats, no roots, just onion and some herbs.”

The only Moscow diary in this book is by 12-year-old Natasha Kolesnikova, and begins the day the Germans attacked. “Moscow is panicking. Queues for food have grown huge. You have to queue the whole day to get bread.” The diary was brought to a Russian museum by Natasha herself at the beginning of this century.

Ironically, Germans were not the only ones to tyrannise the Soviet children; Stalin’s war machine made children do manual labour beyond their tender strength, with 20 million children working 585 million work days. At one plant alone, child workers produced enough steel to make 100 million shells and “enough tank-grade steel to produce 50,000 heavy tanks”.

When tractors and horses were not available, women and children ploughed the fields. Twelve-year-old Alexander Kremlyov became a tractor driver’s assistant, and when he turned 14 became a driver himself. He writes, “We ploughed night and day, with no days off ... We had four hours’ sleep a day. After the harvest had been taken in, I earned a sack of grain for the first time. My mother wept with joy.”

Sixteen-year-old Yura Ryabinkin helped build an air shelter. His diary is the shortest: “It was hellish work. We all learnt how to be stonemasons today. I bashed my hands to pieces with the hammer; they are all covered in scratches now. … Mother handed me a note. … I unfolded it. It was a declaration … announcing that Mother and I were enlisting as volunteers in the Red Army.”

One is astonished by the way Russian children read books even in those sub-human conditions. Here is 13-year-old Volodya Borisenko: “After breakfast I sat down to read Yasenev’s short story collection Sunny Side. I read ‘When the Lime Trees are in Blossom’, ‘At the Halt’, ‘Bright Day’, ‘Great Lads’ and ‘the Language of Feeling’.” Another 13-year-old, V. Chivilikhin, writes, “Read ‘Toilers of the Sea’, a world-class book by Victor Hugo, ‘Eight Tales’ by Matilda Yufit, also a good book, and now reading Emile Zola’s ‘The Belly of Paris’. In occupied Lithuania, Tamara Lazerson writes, “I sit huddled up in my room and read my treasure — a children’s encyclopaedia. I only have to lose myself in that book to forget about autumn, the hunger and the cold.”

The reviewer is Dawn’s Readers Editor.

Children of War: Diaries 1941-1945
(HISTORY)
Translation by Andrew Bromfield, Rose France and Antony Hippisley Argumenty i Fakty & Aif Kind Heart Charitable Foundation, Russia
ISBN: 978-5842722591
478pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 11th, 2016