My Patriotic War

Ukrainian soldier and writer Artyom Czech talks about his front -line experience in the Lugansk region.

In the second part of this issue: Lithuania. A look at the war. Poems by Nikita Grigorov in the “Radio anthology of modern Russian poetry” and “Native Language” with the Ukrainian poetess and translator Katerina Vanitko (Sarajevo, Vinnitsa).

Ukrainian soldier and writer Artyom Czech in the program “My Patriotic War”. The writer was born in Cherkasy in 1985. In 2002 he moved to Kyiv. He began to write in Russian, then switched to Ukrainian. He fought in the Lugansk region. He wrote a documentary book about the war “Point zero”. Laureate of several literary awards.

I had many reasons to go to war. One of them is quite banal: I have a beautiful wife who looks at other men who walk in military uniform. In our difficult time, sitting at home ugly, so it seemed to me. It all started with the Maidan, my wife and I went there and defended the whole Maidan. It was impossible not to go, I perfectly understood this, starting from the Crimea, from March. I then went to the military registration and enlistment office, they told me that, probably, I had to wait. Then there was an Ilovay boiler, I again went to the military registration and enlistment office, they told me that it was not the time. Then it was Debaltseve, I went again, they told me: wait for the agenda. I patiently waited for the agenda, waiting for it, I then decided to go. But first of all, I was ashamed.

The military enlistment office impressed. Later, when I was sent to the training in the city Rivne, I realized that I was not quite in my social environment, these people are not quite my circle of guys. Simple men from villages, mainly from Western Ukraine, and, frankly, there was nothing in common. I had to get used to it, I had to get used to the fact that the commanders give orders, and I fulfill them. Two weeks for me have passed, probably, one of the most difficult in my life. At one in the morning we woke us up, smoke bombs were thrown into the tents, kicked out into the street, forced to push up, run, do some stupid things. Probably, the legs of all this are growing from somewhere in the Soviet Union. I thought a lot about whether I was needed here, whether I made a choice right. I knew that I was waiting ahead to send me to the combat zone. Perhaps, somewhere deep down, I cowardly, I thought that I did not want to get there, because I am a person of the 21st century and is not ready to shoot at other people and kill them all the more. Nevertheless, you made your choice, there is no longer a way back. We arrived at the place from our predecessors, from the previous brigade, which stood in our place, there was a pillar with the indicators “Kyiv - 630 kilometers. The army of the Russian Federation is 2 kilometers 100 meters. ” There was a feeling that the enemy is here, he was close. We understood everything perfectly, adult guys, that there was nothing beautiful in this heroism, it is only beautiful in books or in films, and by and large all this heroism ends where real death, blood begins. Thank God, they did not happen as fast as we thought. Then there was some kind of phase of a truce. We arrived in September 2015, until November 8 there was not a single shot on their part. We shot and, probably, only with fright, that is, we will hear some kind of rustle in the bushes, we open fire, because we are scared. We just arrived at the front line, we do not know anything, we don’t know who can be here, what awaits us. The enemy is depersonalized, you do not perceive him as a specific person or a specific nation, specifically someone, you know that he is there, he has weapons. Say, in the Second World War, the soldiers of the Soviet Union had an enemy-it was a German, just the same should be our own German, but there was no our German, we did not see him, we didn’t see him for a long time, he is the one who was sitting somewhere there. Without a doubt, he is vile, no doubt, he is terrible, no doubt, he wants to kill us. Perhaps we did not fully understand that the same frightened guys were sitting there as we, perhaps, were sitting there merciless Cossacks or “vacationers” of the Russian army, we did not know this, we learned this much later, when we first saw our enemy, we saw in binoculars in the winter of 2016. We advanced a little forward and saw the tricolors on the buttonholes, we then realized who our enemy is. Sometimes we felt it on some stretch marks or mines. Sometimes something flew from the other side-mines, shells, but there were no enemy himself. When we saw him, we realized that he had a face, he has specific callsigns, names, then it began to play a completely different way. I was a shooter, a senior shooter, that is, a person who should just shoot at the enemy from the machine gun. A little later, I was made by the gunner of the armored personnel carrier, this is the person who sits in the armored personnel carrier presses the button, and shoots.

At first, there were too many of us, that is, there was a lot of inaction, there was a lot of laziness, respectively, drunkenness and other unpleasant things. Then there were very few of us, because some quit. We had to be at the posts for days, 6 people at the same point, who observe the perimeter, make sure that enemy intelligence does not get out. A lot of time took to equip your life, digging some pits, constant strengthening of dugouts, cooking, washing, just life in normal fields. That is, the people who got out, roughly speaking, to the picnic, but in addition, they carry some kind of service, sometimes shoot, sometimes hide in dugouts so that some heavy iron does not fall on their heads. The guys and I went in for sports, watched a movie. Unfortunately, the reading was somehow paralyzed. We received more information and some emotions from what was happening around. The feeling of death was constantly. Some news came from the neighboring companies that they shot someone there, a min, broke the guy’s shreds, and you know him. And there the guys stumbled up for stretching. By some miracle, our company has not lost a single fighter in the first 7 months. There were wounded, mainly stretch marks. Still, two kilometers-a fairly large distance, the machine will not reach, the machine gun will not reach. But later the guys began to die by stupidity, again, alcohol and other unpleasant things. And when I quit when I came to Dembel, one at the same place where we stood, the guys from the company began to die - mines, grenades. Until the fact that my company commander is simply unknown who, his own enemies, and no one still knows this, they simply shot, and that’s all. This sense of death is so terrible in its Orthodox mysticism that the first months of staying in the ATO all the time were all the time, the dead guys who died there, they pursued, these guys, at least for me for sure. We knew that they were somewhere nearby, but could not explain it.

My first vacation happened two months after I arrived in the combat zone. Just then the truce ended, another exacerbation began. I remember that the first mine flew on the day of my vacation when I was going to drive away. When the first mine flew in, we went on a train from Konstantinovka to Kyiv, worried. But more I wanted to see my relatives. I just looked impatiently when I saw my wife, when I saw the child, in details I imagined how it all would be. To my surprise, everything happened as I imagined. That is, I come to my son in kindergarten, now he is already in the second grade at school, I bring some kind of toy-it was a “lego”, his surprise, his joy that his dad arrived. I did not leave the house for the first week at all, I could not leave the house, it seemed to me that everything around someone else, not mine, was devoid of any meaning, the one with which my heart was filled. Because it previously seemed to me that the whole country lives in war, because I lived this war. It seemed to me that, she was here, although, having arrived in Kyiv, I understood that they did not feel her, the war is somewhere far away. Later, when I went to Dembel, I myself understood that she was far away. Now I do not perceive her as close as I perceived then - this is normal. Then it seemed to me: how can you not live this war, how can you not understand it, how can you not appreciate these soldiers who are there, including me?

Once my wife came to me, it was two weeks later, literally, as we arrived in the ATO. Bright memories about this. She arrived in Artemovsk, I went to my company commander and say: “Captain, my wife came to me. More precisely, she did not come to me, but to the ATO zone. Can I see her? ” "Certainly". I arrived, it was amazing because I went to the near rear, and it seemed to me that there were only enemies around, I wanted to hide as soon as possible, not to walk in this form through the streets. There was a feeling of easy happiness, euphoria, at the same time regret, sadness, sadness from the fact that tomorrow we will part and, probably for a month, two, three I will not see it. It seemed that I would never see at all. Nevertheless, I saw, she came to me again. It was already at the end of my service, I had three months left before the demobilization. She arrived in the city of Severodonetsk with her new book, with verses, performed there. And again, the company commander, another company commander, said: "Of course, go." I went for three days to Severodonetsk, called a taxi driver directly to the position, a taxi driver came to me, I was driving 80 kilometers from the positions where we stood. All these 80 kilometers I rode, imagined in detail how we would see each other. But this time I did not feel that happiness, that euphoria, which was the first time, on the contrary, I wanted to quickly leave, roughly speaking, this service. Because I have been on the front line for a long time, it was already 7 months old, and the meeting broke my peace and the routine of my day, which I built in these months in order to feel at ease, feel in some volume that helps me survive and remain psychologically healthy. Because, either you sleep, or you find comforts in some nonsense, trips to the village to local girls or something else. I arrived, we walked, walked around Severodonetsk, I just waited for the moment when I could go back to position, although I was good with her. But it was so sad, it is so difficult to understand that I cannot be in this civil form, and that I still need to return. It was just April a month, I had to serve for three more months.

I remember that, going into the army, I thought that I did not want to die first of all because I have a son who needs a father, I wanted to see how he is growing up, I would like to see how he was growing. Honestly, I don’t remember how he perceived my stay there. Now it’s difficult to recall any relationship with him at all, because when he was five years old, he understood something, he understood that I was in the war, but his ideas about the war were quite abstract and not as concrete as it is now. Now, before coming to Prague, they called me to the military registration and enlistment office and said that they wanted to pick up the exercises. I told my son, he did not quite understand that this was the teachings, he thought that they wanted to pick me up again for war. And he burst into tears, said: “I do not want you to go there again because I do not want to live without you. I understand that they can be killed there. ” I told him: “These are just a month, these are military fees. I have to. " I did not go, because I have a good reason - in Prague I represent Ukraine as a writer. My military commissar said: “Yes, of course, this is the reason, you can not go to the training camp, they are not so important now.” I understood this difference between the perception of my son, the perception of the war by my son then and now. Because now it is concrete for him - this is death. He is very afraid, oddly enough, a chemical attack and atomic war, from somewhere he came up with strange phobias. And before for him it was some continuation of the Maidan. He had some strange surnames constantly spinning-Yanukovych, Putin, Putin, Yanukovych, he constantly pronounced them, war, all this was mixed with him. Probably, there was a wild confusion in the head, and now it's all specifically: there is a war, there is a war with Russia. He understands it perfectly.

For myself, I did not determine that there is patriotism for me, love for my country. A very difficult topic, because for a long time, as it were, did not determine for himself such a concept as love for the country, I live and live myself. Why did I go there at all? For civilians, it is probably difficult to understand such a thing as war. In 2014, we all did not expect this. There was a Maidan, there was death, we understood that no revolution could do without it. But for one state to attack another in the XXI century, it is very difficult to understand. Many people simply rushed then, roughly speaking, east, not knowing what was waiting for them there, fight, not to fight, to help. And I wanted, but something restrained, the family restrained. My friends told me: listen, there are a lot of guys who can go. I also quarreled with them and said: how can the guys be simpler, we all live in one country, there are no easier guys. Roughly speaking, let the children of the Grechkoseyes go to fight, and you can write books. I say: I may not write anything, maybe it makes sense just in this: to go there and understand something except in order to protect your country from the aggressor, understand, to realize something and continue to live. But how I can live on, knowing that I did not go, because I was frightened or thought that there are guys simpler. I love my country and always loved it, even when I read exclusively Russian literature, my mother by profession is a teacher of Russian language and literature. On my regiments, besides the three -volume, Mark Vovchka never had other Ukrainian literature, it all came much later. For me, there were never distinctions between Ukrainian literature and Russian literature, for me it was all one. And only then, when I graduated from school, I began to understand that there is a country in Ukraine, and I live in it. This was just the time of the late Kuchma, when I realized that I love my country and that, perhaps, someday I have to compete for this country.

Further in the program:

"Lithuania. A look at the war "

Conductor Saulus Sondetkis:

“Among people, the largest composer is Mozart. But there is also a bang. This is no longer a person, this is already a demigod. This is cleansing music. After it, the person is like a newborn. After the Second World War, it seemed that people had to understand the terrible horrors of war. But no. At first the Germans came, then the Soviet army came. I remember all this. "

Radio anthology of modern Russian poetry.

Poems by Nikita Grigorova. He was born and raised in Donetsk. The author of the books "Black and White Contract" and "Sketches for the life of a nugget". The winner and winner of the All -Ukrainian and International Literary Competitions. In 2011, he won the International Internet Olympiad in the Russian language, overtaking competitors from Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia and Kazakhstan. Compiled by “Anthology of Ukrainian writers of Donbass”. Lives in Kyiv.

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On a smooth road: a car rushes
On the sidelines on the right: Grass is growing
On the side of the left: dust swirls
You seem to be again: there was right

To the roof of the car: bicycle wiped
stands on wheels that do not know the taste of roads
and which shines with paint for zero years
I think again: I could not understand

farther and farther as long as the eye is enough
On a smooth road: a car rushes
If I do not close the window: now
Dust will settle on tea and aloe

"Native Language" with the Ukrainian writer and translator Katerina olive (Sarajevo, Vinnitsa).