Plates

Nothing is forgotten, but someone is lost. Victory Day in one single village

We left Moscow at 4 am, in two cars. Nikolai Nikolaevich Pekhletsky, two sons and a niece. To the village of Dneprovskoe, Smolensk region - five hours at a good speed. The first time Nikolai Nikolayevich came to Dneprovskoe was two years...

We left Moscow at 4 am, in two cars. Nikolai Nikolaevich Pekhletsky, two sons and a niece.

To the village of Dneprovskoe, Smolensk region - five hours at a good speed.

The first time Nikolai Nikolayevich came to Dneprovskoye two years ago. He came because on the Internet it turned out that his father was buried there, who died near the village of Kobylino on November 29, 1942. Lists of military graves were kept in the village school. And in the lists, Nikolai Nikolaevich found his father.

The burial place - a mass grave - was overgrown with burdock and nettles. There was not a single name on it. Only numbers. “At first I only wanted to erect a monument to my father,” says Nikolai Nikolayevich. “And then I thought: they all died together.” And I found a man who paid for memorial plates for a mass grave. Actually, for the grand opening of these memorial plates, they drove in two cars for five hours.

38-year-old Nikolai Ivanovich Pekhletsky, director of a complex of orphanages in the Moscow region, was not taken to the front. There was a stamp in the passport: "Not fit for military education." He saw very badly. He didn't even wear glasses - thick glass lenses that looked like telescopes. Why does this go to war?

It took Nikolai Ivanovich six months to persuade the draft board. And in December 41st, he still went to the front.

14-year-old Nikolai (then his name was October, he took the name of his father later) was very angry. Before the war, he was very jealous of his father for his work. Every day, the director of orphanages got up at six and took the train - he traveled around the subordinated areas. Returned late in the evening and fell like a wreck. In order to stay longer with his father, Nikolai even lived in orphanages for a week, or even a month. And all the same, father was always distracted by something. These grimy children of the orphanage seemed to be closer to the director than his own son.

Nikolai Ivanovich came on vacation from the front only once, for a couple of days. And as luck would have it, the orphanage caught fire, Nikolai Ivanovich broke loose at night and left. This is how the vacation turned out.

But before November 1942, he managed to write more than 200 letters: "Such a thick pile." They begin the same way: “Dear Klash and October!” In letters, Nikolai Ivanovich told in detail that everything was fine with the products: “Cheese, peas, American sausage, light tobacco”, “there are cookies, butter, canned food, sugar in the bag.” He awkwardly declared his love to his family: “I have visited many places, I will have to visit more than small places. How I would love to be with you now." He asked how they celebrated his son's birthday, advised him to stock up on food for the winter. In general, not combat letters at all. Sometimes in the lines one feels some kind of completely civic confusion: “It was very difficult for D.I. Shesterikov. Although it seems to be a common thing here.” But he never mentioned Stalin in his letter, which surprised his son very much. The letters are mostly in pencil, but there are a few written in pen. Some lines were smeared with blue chemical pencil: military censorship tried.

And then the letters stopped coming. The wife and son understood everything and "began to prepare." But how do you prepare for this? First came a letter from the division commander. The commander told how political instructor Pekhletsky, raising soldiers to attack, was shot dead, and also listed how many tanks were knocked out in this battle. Then came the funeral. And then the mother was summoned to the Kremlin, and Kalinin personally presented her with the Order of the Patriotic War - the only award that could be handed out to the relatives of the deceased soldier.

In the funeral it was reported that the father rests near the village of Kobylino. But when they managed to get to Kobylin, the village was gone. There was also no mass grave.

It so happened that Nikolai found his father only now - when he himself became twice as old as the half-blind director of orphanages, who left forever in the winter of 1941.

The village of Dneprovskoye cannot be called ordinary. For 800 inhabitants there are five monuments of the Great Patriotic War, and two of them are on mass graves. And so - the village as a village. Crooked houses, chickens dig in the grass, a bearded goat sleeps by the road. Women in bras are weeding the first weeds, rumpled men are sunbathing near a closed general store. Only fresh, not yet painted fences stand out from the general picture: the district administration is expected to arrive at the opening of the memorial plates, and it was decided to repair the fences along the main road.

Mass grave No. 8, where Pekhletsky is buried, is a small area in the very center of the village, enclosed by a blue fence. Birches with black spots of crow's nests. Here lie the bodies of 808 soldiers and officers. Only 513 have been officially identified. The slabs, in fact, have already been installed - 11 granite boards. There are finishing touches left. And the head of the village administration, Galina Konstantinovna Shevelkova, already in festive attire, but still in rubber boots, wipes the slabs with rags, pulls out weeds from the flower bed in front of the grave. The sons of Nikolai Nikolaevich are planting tulips (they were bought at the market in Vyazma on the way). Another flower bed is decorated with plastic flowers awkwardly stuck into the ground and faded in the sun.

There are 105 students in the Dnieper school - the one that looks after two mass graves and five monuments. Lessons are shortened today - the school management decided that all students should be present at the opening of the memorial plates. And now the boys and girls in red ties are bored on the porch. These are the pioneers. Even at school there are "larks" (analogue of October) and counselors (Komsomol).

Nina Alexandrovna Melnichenko, head of the Dnieper pioneers, boasts: “There is a horn, a drum, and a tie. We are engaged in KTD - collective creative affairs. We look after graves, monuments, meet labor veterans, and on May 9 we will organize a war song festival.”

One gets the impression that the Great Patriotic War at school is almost the main topic. At the school stand there is a certificate about the partisan detachment "People's Avenger", which operated on the territory of the district, "Dniprovske during the years of occupation", photographs of hanged civilians.

The principal of the school, Nadezhda Anatolyevna Soboleva, says that the theme of the Great Patriotic War is the most alive here: “There were no Germans beyond the Urals at all. And here, in the Smolensk region, everyone survived the horrors of battles and occupation.”

But yesterday an emergency happened at school: “One high school student said: “I won’t go to the opening of the stoves. The lessons are over and I'm going home. I talked to him for an hour and a half. Children don’t usually have such open resistance.” He is silent and suddenly admits: “But who knows what the children really think.”

The school also has an independent study of mass graves, thanks to which Nikolai Nikolaevich found his father. True, the historian Sergei Alexandrovich Titov admits that the entire study was done by “virtually one girl”:

- Now among the guys there are very few fans of this topic. More precisely, not at all.

- And why?

“It's just that there are some difficulties with how to present the material,” the director cuts in. - Now there is no state order for the type of citizen that we must educate.

- Yes, teaching the Great Patriotic War is a minimum of education, but basically an attempt to instill in children a sense of pride in their country, - Sergey Alexandrovich admits. - We are trying to make them patriots - that is, people who love their state. And now this is happening: young people wear tricolor flags, St. George ribbons.

Even at the school there is a stand with photographs of 24 war veterans of the village of Dneprovskoye (there were about a hundred of them in total). The portraits are crossed with black ribbons. Only one has survived to this day - senior sergeant Aleshin Pavel Pavlovich, born in 1925.

Pavel Pavlovich hears almost nothing. He walks with a stick - for 60 years a German bullet has been sitting in his spine: "A sniper in 1943 waved me." It is impossible to operate: "I am too weak." A bag and a catheter are tied to the leg. But today he is in smart uniform since the morning - he is also preparing for the opening of memorial plaques. Awards - the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, the Red Star, the Zhukov medal, "For the victory over Germany" - are polished and sparkling.

He went to the front on March 20, 1942, straight from Dnieper and reached Berlin. He served on the Second Belorussian Front as a mortar man. There, in fact, he began to lose his hearing.

There is no road to Pavel Pavlovich's house. Instead of a road, there is a ravine covered with construction debris and branches. The house is rickety, cracks in the foundation. Nearby are dug-up beds with potatoes. In the village, where there are five monuments of military glory and a pioneer movement, Pavel Pavlovich digs the garden himself.

The house is dirty and heavy spirit. On the floor - dishes of various sizes: in case of rain, put under leaks in the roof. There is no toilet in the house. Plumbing too. In order to wash, you need to lay an oilcloth on the floor and wipe yourself with a soapy, damp cloth: “Like you wash the dead.” True, there is a stove, but they try to heat it less often: the chimney is clogged, and you can easily get burned.

Pavel Pavlovich's wife, Ekaterina Dmitrievna Aleshina, is sitting on a dismantled bed. She is 86. She is blind. Swollen, crippled legs peek out from under the nightgown. Hasn't been out of the house for a long time. Crying: “The legs froze to the boots. For what?"

Throughout the war, she worked at a factory in the Siberian city of Kiselevsk: she collected shells, mines and bombs for the front. The plant was hastily expanded, and the premises that were previously intended for demolition - with broken walls, without heating - again became workshops. At the mechanisms, the snow melted, and the melt water flowed on the concrete floor. It was then that the legs froze to the boots. Tore off along with the skin.

The stalling mortarman Pavel Pavlovich survived thanks to inhuman luck. Ekaterina Dmitrievna survived thanks to theft. The plant had a subsidiary farm, and at night the workers went to steal food. “They took a little, just to survive: a handful of seeds or a carrot.” The daily norm - 700 grams of bread and half a bowl of soup with a stump - was not enough.

Ekaterina Dmitrievna does not have a disability group received at work. Her documents were lost in the military archive, and it seems that in her life there were neither boots frozen to her feet, nor 700 grams per day, nor endless mines under swollen fingers. And there was no family. Three of her brothers were killed in the war, two were maimed, and they did not live long. Now she has only Pavel Pavlovich left in the whole world.

Listening to his wife, Pavel Pavlovich strokes his head. Tears now and then fill his eyes, but he does not cry. Tries to smile.

“It somehow turned out stupid, although everyone speaks very well on TV,” Ekaterina Dmitrievna admits. “But I don’t understand why our family suffered.”

On TV, the old people heard that every veteran is now entitled to an apartment: “And there is a shower, and a toilet, and paradise!” Miraculously, they collected all the necessary documents and in 2006 handed over to the local administration, and she had to send them to Smolensk. There is still no answer: "They are probably considering." “Maybe it’s better to ask the German boss about an apartment,” Pavel Pavlovich smiles. “I’ve been carrying a evon bullet in my back for 60 years, maybe I’ve already earned money for a toilet?”

“You have to die, but there is no death. Death does not come. Like, you’ll suffer, and then you’ll die,” says Ekaterina Dmitrievna. “Two bad people live here. And the house is unusable, and the tenants are unusable. Set it on fire and it's good."

“Woe, woe! Trees are green! says Pavel Pavlovich and smiles again.

Ekaterina Dmitrievna suddenly becomes embarrassed: “I didn’t want to cry. True, I didn't want to. It's just that our floor is bumpy, it goes back and forth. I collapsed and hit the bed."

Ekaterina Dmitrievna has a pension of 8 thousand, Pavel Pavlovich has 10 thousand. Well, potatoes, of course.

On the table is a congratulation from United Russia on the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory: “Today we are learning from you purposefulness, resilience and self-confidence. Your feat is an invaluable contribution to increasing the glory of our Fatherland. He will forever remain in the hearts of Russians and will never be forgotten.”

I see in this a sophisticated mockery. Alyosha's spouses - no.

At the school - just September 1 in May: pioneer ties, white uniforms, flowers in their hands. True, the slender column falls apart after 30 steps.

The third graders argue over who will go hand in hand with whom. A girl of about 14 carries a wreath and straightens her skirt. In the middle are sixth graders and seventh graders: pokes, cracks and fights. At the end are conversations.

- I'll plant potatoes today. And fry something, huh?

- I'll plant you myself. If you pay.

- Only in kind.

- I'm not satisfied with the nature.

Are you going to the club tonight?

About a hundred people gathered at the mass grave No. 8. People modestly stood behind the fence. Representatives of the administration, Nikolai Nikolaevich Pekhletsky, five excited pioneers, and several veterans from neighboring villages stood in front of the grave. Pavel Pavlovich, with a bouquet of flowers in his hands, was seated on a bench. Galina Konstantinovna opened the "solemn meeting of the village of Dneprovskoye." I warmly thanked Alexander Evgenievich Lebedev, who paid for the installation and manufacture of the plates.

The first to speak was the deputy head of the administration of the Novoduginsky district. The words "with all my heart", "the greatness of the perfect Victory" he read from the red daddy. But then crows croaked on the branches of birches, roosters crowed after them. And the villagers moved on to a discussion of more pressing problems: is it true that the day before lightning hit the substation, and could it not have been a terrorist attack carried out in the village of Dneprovskoye by Chechen terrorists?

The head of the village Dutikov also spoke. Also on paper. Then the veterans were given the floor.

But by this time the veterans had already stood in the sun for half an hour. It was hard and hot to stand, the old people were tired. Therefore, a good performance did not work out, and Galina Dmitrievna quickly passed the floor to the pioneers. The pioneers read poems “about the war” and shouted several times: “Victory!” They received the most applause.

Hidden behind the trees, three officers from a neighboring paratrooper unit fired three shots into the air. The solemn laying of wreaths at the grave began. One of the bouquets was presented to Pavel Pavlovich. He accepted it with a nod of thanks. And finally he cried.

Dispersed, discussing the rally. Almost everyone agreed that the veterans should have been better prepared for such an event. The village administration and the guests got into the cars to celebrate the successful event, and the upcoming Victory Day at the same time. Only the historian Titov and daughter-in-law Elena, a rural paramedic, went to see Pavel Pavlovich home. They walked with stops: stumbling over potholes, Pavel Pavlovich kept dropping flowers. But we did not dare to take away the bouquet from him.

"I don't understand," Titov said suddenly. - I really don't seem to understand, although I should: I teach social science. Yes, there was the Soviet Union, Russia has become. But the people are the same! Where is the empathy? And children…"

“Yes, what about children? What's with the kids? Children understand everything very well! - the paramedic suddenly got angry and added, already quieter: - We ourselves, we ourselves say one thing, but do another. We screwed up."

Pavel Pavlovich smiled bewilderedly. He didn't hear any of this at all. And I was very happy about it.

In general, in half an hour Pavel Pavlovich was brought home, the bag was changed, and he was given medicine.

At this very time, in a rural barbershop, covered for a banquet, they were eating excellent aspic with horseradish, Kiev cutlets, chopped fruit, white and red Spanish wines, vodka. According to those present at the banquet, the holiday continued "lively and cheerfully" - short, more informal speeches of administration officials were accompanied by playing the button accordion and military songs ...