Own cold autumn

About the First World War - memoir prose and pop song

The fact that the autumn of 1914 was cold, each of us remembers Bunin’s ingenious story .

And here is the female memories of that time. The station is somewhere in the Russian outback. A crowded train.

“A kind of very aggressive type came in, and, therefore, sat next to me, I pushed me away ... Well, then there were other soldiers, and he, therefore, reacted very much to me, and that's it ... I moved, I didn’t say so, and then, gradually, he wanted to put my legs to my knees. I also pulled away again. But it could not be a tobacco and so that it is, that there is only a tabac. We served people there.

This is the story of the daughter of Leo Tolstoy Alexandra, recorded already in the 1960s. The interviewer asks: And if the soldiers knew whose daughter you were, their behavior would be others?

“Little, unfortunately, they knew about Leo Tolstoy. Very few knew. When they knew, then, of course, the attitude was completely different. Here, in the carriage, at the front it was personally to me. And you know what I think? Not because I am some kind of special person, but only because my father taught me to love a simple people. I understood their psychology, and I loved them.”

Many had their own memories of that cold autumn. Not everyone recorded them. And some not only recorded, but also turned into a world hit. This happened with the song "Lily Marlene", about which there are more myths than reliable.

The program "Myths and reputation" will tell about the First World War through the lips of Russian women and performers "Lily Marlene" in several European languages.

The combined release of C'est La Vie programs and "listening to the horrors of war" on Sunday August 10 at 22 Moscow time.

Andrei Gavrilov and Ivan Tolstoy are conducting the program.