the front line so that they would carry out their sabotage in the occupied territory, mostly there were young people there in the fall of forty-one, they were thrown in for girls, young guys, komsomol members who had no military training, who came to volunteer to sign up for the war there and offered to would you like to... take part in history, here are those of them who survived, they came to our school , met with us, and i remember one veteran, so cheerful with gray hair, and he says, well, how can i tell you , how to or how it was, she says , how it was, that’s what exactly he said, i don’t remember now , it’s a pity that i don’t remember, but i remember something else, these veterans came, it was always december 6, the day when our counteroffensive began under moscow when the germans recaptured it.

talked about the war, well, he told some things, but, for example, he never said what he received the award for, then some years passed, even after the publication of the novel, one of my good friends helped me find documents in the archives , award lists, in the archives ministry of defense, award sheets for my grandfather, so i received these photocopies with trepidation, i began to read and read that -

on september 15, 1945, in such and such an area, such and such a clash occurred , the commander of the gun of the second battery of the 817th regiment gelasimov anton afanasyevich skillfully fired from his gun, directing it with direct fire , personally repelled the japanese counterattack, destroying eight eight japanese soldiers and then a little lower. well, there is the year of birth, what medal is awarded, and below it is written: in red the army has not participated in combat operations since 1943, so i’m starting to think, that is, this is the first battle, that is, a man arrived, yes, he found himself in a combat situation , the man there at that moment is 26 years old, and this is howitzer artillery, i always knew that from my grandfather, the howitzer battery is located, alexey nikolaevich is always slightly behind the infantry, they hit over the heads of our soldiers. into the enemy,

further there, they are located a little in the rear, which means they are in infantry combat formations, which means that the infantry rolled back here, then he personally repelled the enemy’s counterattack, and it’s clear that there was a breakthrough on the part of the japanese, the infantry moved back, reached the howitzer battery, and these artillery sitting here smoking, suddenly seeing all this rushing, instead of saying, grab your head and run away, they begin to lower it. their howitzers , and their barrel should be slightly angled like this, because it hits with a canopy far away, 20 kilometers away, and it says , i say again, direct fire, and i understand that they manage to do so in these fractions of seconds, minutes, seeing means that the enemy is rolling towards them and retreating soldiers, start lowering the barrel , this takes time, that means giving some commands, let’s lower it into the barrel, time passes, these are getting closer, closer, closer, at this moment a huge projectile needs to be tucked into the breech, shot, another shot, another shot, and the enemy’s counterattack is repulsed, i keep thinking, 26 years old, first battle, you

find yourself in such a situation, i’m even scared to imagine myself in the place of my grandfather, and he, alexey nikolaevich, never told me about this, i read this is from handwritten records of his commander, that is, well , maybe there was no need to tell them about it, that is, glory was not what they wanted, maybe it wasn’t necessary, but it just really turns out that this is our idea of ​​the war, it’s really incomplete, it’s interesting here to see how different generations react to... to the same event, that is, if in the prose of the lieutenants we hear the voice of a participant in the events, and the objectivity of what is happening is directly felt, you are specifically in this situation when you read, in bondarev you find the phrase literally in at the very beginning of the novel, uh, sand creaked on your teeth, in the hot snow, yes, that is, sand creaks on your teeth, and when you read, you understand that a man is walking, and running, he was inhaled, this sand is creaking, and ...

seryozha samsonov cannot have this squeak of sand on his teeth, because he perceives the war on a different level, he was not there, he did not get this dust into his mouth at the time of the attack, right? but he didn’t sit in that trench, he really perceives it from the point of view of mythology, like homer’s, yes, he looks for it in those that generalize, this is another generation, some generalizing principles, elements, and so on. boeshov relies, uh, on the tradition of herman melville, yes, the white, white tiger, the white tiger is very reminiscent of the white whale, moby dzika from this novel, his hero himself, this ivan ivanovich naydenov, in my opinion, he calls him this hero, this i. to captain ahab, captain ahaf, who with a harpoon rushes across the seas and oceans, just to kill this personified evil, this strange white whale, yes, and here is a white tiger, yes white tank, so as you can see, i repeat once again, if the specific prose of the lieutenants impresses us

with the effect of presence, it’s as if we were once in a payoff, right there next to you, as if someone is about to tap you on the shoulder and say, brother, stop smoking, that is, here we already have... such , i don’t know, if you want, mythological, the distance necessary for this mythology about war to be created has already appeared, this is a good mythology, this is so correct, every the generation will, of course, bring your opinion and so on, the topic is inexhaustible , so i hope that people will continue to write, because you know, not so long ago, i think we shot a documentary for one channel about a year or a year and a half ago, a ticket to war with students literary institute... we filmed this, they are in the frame , we showed them, it means that we have arrived near st. petersburg, it means that this is where the oreshek fortress stands, there is a railway station nearby, and there is a small one there that looks like it’s practically private, but he understands that not a private one, but a small museum of this

railway station, where these trains were formed, which came from the mainland, delivered as soon as the opportunity arose to extend the railway line and break the blockade. then these trains were going there , she was all shaking, these rails stood on logs, there were practically no sleepers, and one of my students, it means that this museum worker is standing there, he asks if they were shot at at that time when they they built this, she says, yes, constantly, then there are bombers flying all the time, howitzer artillery is hitting, it ’s located 15 km away, and there it’s a mystery right there where the crossing is being built, where the railway is being built , and it was extremely important.

like some hollywood superheroes, alexey nikolaevich, she told me about one, he says, he was just a... do you know what he did? as soon as the train left, german intelligence received information there from their reconnaissance planes, attack aircraft immediately flew out to bomb this train, which means they were flying out, so he says he learned do, he was maneuvering, can you imagine maneuvering on rails, neither left nor right, you cannot turn, therefore you can only maneuver with speed, he hears attack aircraft coming after him, carrying bombs, and machine guns, and so on... so on, he slams on the brakes, she says, backs up, and releases clouds of steam in which the locomotive is hiding, imitates being hit, the mesters say , they will circle, circle, leave, he quietly, quietly, without turning on the lights, crawls on, i saw his photo , amazingly beautiful

man, we will not defeat this people, yes, yes, yes, yes, well, thank you very much, andrei valevich, for this conversation, it was a podcast about the life of the wonderful, with you... alexey varlamov, writer, rector of the literary institute. we talked about the heroes of the great patriotic war , about modern writers who write about the war. i saw two here the other day.

i can name many names who were called

the forerunners of peter the great, although in fact, of course, some, some, but they are incomparable, not one of them with peter in the grandeur of the reforms, in the persistence of these reforms and in results, in general, because yes , ivan the terrible was

, about the reform of the army, because during the campaigns to the south he suffered a big, major failure, especially since he wanted to reform the army, well, in general, all of them, of course, only partially , vasily kolyuchevsky believed that, in general, his ancestors left peter almost a preliminary design of all the reforms, and peter then, so to speak, followed this project, there is really no evidence of this in history, that’s not all, from what he listed klyuchevsky, so to speak, peter implemented, well at least in general logic, especially

since this logic was determined by a number of negative factors, russia in the 17th century lost many wars and often, well, you can remember the time of troubles, but then twice in 1634, in 1660, the russian army capitulated with banners commander-in-chief in full force, chegerin campaigns, war with the ottoman. empires are dragging on in general, for russia in general it was not very successful, for the ottoman empire it was also not very successful, but at least a decisive turning point could not be achieved, with not the most combat-ready in europe russia has been fighting with the polish army for a very long time and painfully, in fact, the crimean campaigns of vasily golitsin, whom you mentioned, and unsuccessful campaigns, they tried to make some attempt at luck out of them, but nevertheless the crimean khan then annoyed russia until the time of catherine, russia... inferior to the west, this becomes obvious, among these failures

, in fact, the first attempts of peter i, this is the first azov campaign, is also not the most powerful fortress, because the azov fortress was outdated at that time, nevertheless, the first azov campaign fails, second with with great effort, successful, well, then the disaster near narva, 1700, when the northern war begins for russia, all this shows that the country needs modernization, because if the army fights like this, if... the situation with military-political efforts is so bad, it means that they can simply eat you, to put it in these completely banal language, of course, they wanted to eat, and they wanted to eat, of course, they wanted to eat, yes, russia pulled out such a joker from the figure of peter, because the figure is completely extraordinary , there's a lot here accidents in my opinion, well, listen, the sixteenth child from his second marriage, by the way, and... with natalya naryshkina the fourteenth, well, it doesn’t matter, well, i don’t remember , you know, you can get lost, with so

many descendants you can get beaten up, it was necessary for a lot of different circumstances to develop in order for this particular person to ascend the throne, he did not receive the education that the heirs to the throne usually received, so to speak, after the death of his brother fedor, in general, the street became his teachers , german settlement. she could build in a completely different place, and we know what the impact will be. peter was punished , so to speak, by the german settlement and those uh masters with whom he met who taught him, but the same klyuchevsky, he once wrote in his diary that autocracy - with only narva without poltava - is nonsense, here is peter i he really was one of those people who

knew how to take responsibility for himself , that is, he did not hesitate to hold himself responsible for what he did.

for a person, this is also a kind of education, it forms, so to speak, in general, peter, of course, well, according to today , you can call him a technician, he was primarily interested in hardware, even in preobrazhenskoye he took a lot from the kremlin, all sorts of weapons and other tools, and from the armory, and then returned everything broken or

disassembled into parts , because he tinkered with all the pieces of hardware, first of all you... were interested, of course, in technology, military affairs, anything, so to speak, connected with technology, with all these matters, this was the first priority, in fact , when he went abroad, the first thing he did was that he wanted to see the riga fortress , the swedes didn’t allow it, then there was a version that he started to fight with the swedes because he was offended that they didn’t let him in, to see if they greeted him , really, very coldly, they did its cold. well, of course, i remember that somewhere after peter’s death, notes from some incomprehensible gentleman were found in the archive, so to speak, his impression of the west, but what interested this gentleman, just in order to understand the directly opposite antipodes, i i don’t know, there are acrobats jumping over their heads,

a dancing elephant, well, a lot of all sorts of entertaining things. they completed their studies in the ship's building, no , he was not satisfied, he went to england, he also studied a lot, there were episodes when he somehow touched on other topics, visited parliament, left there with an impression, and it’s funny when they scold him, so to speak, the sovereign , but not for us, but not for us, not for us, not

for us, he had a conversation with the local archbishops about, so to speak, religion, the church. this must be understood, this is still the case in many ways a mystery, because mass historians have versions of how he was formed, his personality traits that developed in childhood, but he is not a characteristic figure for russia in the 16th century, this is important. understand that this desperate curiosity, craving for novelty , the ability to assimilate it, the desire to touch everything with your hands and produce it all yourself, a clear focus

on practical needs, theoretical ones also appeared later, when there was a regular regulation, when there was already some attempt creating what we call a regular state, but that will come later, reforms peter's are quite chaotic, the whole purpose is to create a coalition against turkey, although historians argue from the very beginning whether it was against the ottoman empire. maybe initially there were also ideas about sweden, but in any case, the task is to create a coalition to access the sea. what is the sea needed for? this is trade, since the proceeds from trade with russia ended up in the pockets of western merchants and some of the largest cities through which russian goods were exported. riga, respectively könecksberg, where peter, by the way, on the question of his practical needs head. is looking for allies , trying to create an international coalition

in order to gain access to the sea, access to the sea is also an opportunity to get more of those very new products of the west, and in this case it is not particularly important for him to have access to which sea, or the black one, then we must fight with turkey, continuing the azov theme. or the north, respectively, then against sweden, but it must be said that diplomatically, it didn’t work out very well, russian diplomacy was still only wearing short pants in holland, the diplomatic mission was completely and absolutely failed, including through the fault of peter himself, there was not enough subtlety, and what europe was interested in at that time was that the elderly spanish king was soon to die, and europe had to grab the spanish inheritance, whether the bourbons, the french or ? in habsburg, holy roman empire, vienna. peter i visited vienna, of course, he was there, well, it’s like the austrians were in theirs, with these

diplomatic subtleties then, at least later he will learn, and russian diplomats they will learn later, but at that time i still couldn’t cope, especially since the russians were just beginning to comprehend the science of giving bribes to foreign ministers, but for now they behaved quite freely, in my opinion this is in holland, or in england, in england, the account is at. .. the houses where the russian embassy was located, for the broken furniture, torn paintings and even a ruined park, they had a full, full rest, and so, it was not possible to create a coalition against turkey, europe then, in general, russia, western europe is not particularly interested , even if you look at the cards then, there are all sorts of names, yes, there are black russia, white russia, tataria, it’s just not interesting, europe ends, roughly speaking, then it’s still poland, well, yes. but he still managed to create a coalition against sweden, but the swedes interfered with the danes, the saxons, the saxon ruler august v, thanks

to the russian troops, by the way, received the polish crown, friendship, and they met with august on the way back, and in fact the finishing touches to were given to the anti-swedish alliance when peter was rushing, it must be recalled that he was going to get to italy, just to venice, yes, to get acquainted with the venetian trade, venice was already well...

they asked, what would have happened if the swedes had won, and not the russians? and he answered that well, then a soviet and swedish one would also arise.

maybe near the white sea, maybe not like that, it won’t be so rich, maybe it won’t be so russian, this state, apparently they decided, thought, decided, without all these maybe it would be better to win, the battle of poltava immediately put russia among the european states, let's remember that sweden at this moment is a very powerful regional power, almost 5 minutes later, a world power that, as a result of the thirty-year war, rose to prominence in europe, the swedish army.

it is considered the legislative cmo in land battles at that time, here it is the victorious swedish army, which had previously beaten the russians led by charles, beaten the poles, whoever had been beaten up to this moment, now it is suffering devastatingly, it is important to understand that this was not just a defeat, it was a disaster, it was a complete defeat, only later the pursuit of the russian army after poltava was captured, but it must be said that peter leads to poltava very carefully, peter avoided unnecessary risks, in general there is such an idea, peter is decisive.

demonstrated loyalty , unlike many previous hetmans, but these are details , he never followed the strategy of crushing the enemy, he was a very careful commander, a fairly cautious ruler, few people in our country wonder why, in fact, as many as 12 years passed between poltava and the non-civilian world years old, what happened, we don’t think much about it somehow, some believe that the whole point is in charles xi, this is his character, he was

generally... no panic, he was sure that by this moment the russian army, the russian fleet were capable to protect russia, secondly , a policy of enforcing peace began, as you said , they went there, beat up to poltava, the same thing, they landed troops on swedish soil, they went and did not touch churches, did not touch the civilian population, they destroyed factories there, copper smelters there and so on and so forth, the

moreover, that... the first one removed the threat to germany , he removed the troops from micklenburg, again he did not take risks, this is very important, and in parallel with this, it is also important to understand why for 12 years, firstly, the swedes remained with a fleet, which also had to be beaten, and gangut , the fourteenth year, to the grings, then, yes, the swedish fleet is defeated, for the second time due to the english, by the way, but the most important thing is that during all this there is a restructuring, a radical restructuring of the entire system of management, taxation , providing the army, the old system. an unlimited source, and this is a tough, very tough system, if a recruit runs, then those who respectively provided him, those who vouched for him, there were vouchers there, must take his place, a very

tough system.

not contemporary with the ideas that then existed in europe, a state where the ruler, accordingly , identifies himself with the fatherland, and peter ii actually identified himself with the fatherland, considered himself a servant of the fatherland, though the first, of course, but still a servant of the fatherland, but at the same time this regular state must subjugate the inhabitants, there must be control over the inhabitants, symbolically, i returns from ... the embassy, ​​in addition to the fact that he chops off the heads of the archers, takes part in torture, he cuts the boyars ’ beards with his own hands, and then after a while he also kavtanov shortens the half, that is, albeit petty, but control, including over the personal lives of the residents

of the state, and all this together adds up to that pyramid of reforms, because peter’s reforms are very difficult to study chronologically, because something here and there, we still talk about them.

a generation of russian officers had already risen under peter, of course, industry is indisputable, because so much was built, well, one example, if... we had our own production, failure, of course, this was agriculture, because the country was so exhausted, the village was bled dry , so here, of course, we need to take a step forward.