Nikolai Litvin's 800 Days On The Eastern Front

Personally, this was the hardest section of the book to get through. The majority of content from this section described events that were leading up to Stalingrad. There were stories on how the higher ups of the German and Soviet governments responded to

Generals Die in Bed certainly demonstrates that war is futile and the soldiers suffer both emotionally and physically. Charles Yale Harrison presents a distressing account of the soldiers fighting in the Western front, constantly suffering and eventually abandoning hope for an end to the horrors that they experience daily. The ‘boys’ who went to war became ‘sunk in misery’. We view the war from the perspective of a young soldier who remains nameless. The narrator’s experience displays the futility and horror of war and the despair the soldiers suffered. There is no glory in

The Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.

Young women in particular face serious forms of abuse during this time. The author describes on multiple occasions when she was assaulted by Russian soldiers. While she describes how horrible this makes her feels, she knows that having the Russian officers around her does protect her in certain ways. She is the companion of Russian soldier by the name of Anatol. He and other soldiers

It’s no surprise that soldiers will more-than-likely never come home the same. Those who have not served do not often think of the torment and negative consequences that the soldiers who make it out of war face. Erich Remarque was someone who was able to take the torment that he faced after his experience in World War I and shed light on the brutality of war. Remarque was able to illustrate the psychological problems that was experienced by men in battle with his best-selling novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Hunt). The symbolism used in the classic anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front is significant not only for showing citizens the negative attributes of war, but also the mental, physical, and emotional impact that the vicious war had on the soldiers.

Ars Moriendi The complete ensemble gathers to pray and mourn Pius’ passing. Tone is drumming like a military march to symbolize the start of WWI. A bells tolls throughout. Pius sings with labored breath, taking air after every phrase.

War is always the worst tragedy of mankind in the world. We, as human beings, were experienced two most dolorous wars that were ever happened in our history: World War I and World War II. A young generation actually does not know how much hardship the predecessors, who joined and passed through the wars, undergo. We were taught about just how many people died in the wars, how much damage two participations in the wars suffered or just the general information about the wars. We absolutely do not know about the details, and that’s why we also do not know what the grief-stricken feeling of people joining in the wars really is. But we can somewhat understand that feeling through war novels, which describe the truthfulness of the soldiers’ lives, thoughts, feelings and experiences. All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, which takes World War I as background, is the great war novel which talks about the German soldiers ' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the hopeless of these soldiers about the “future” – the time the war would have ended.

Mansur Abdulin takes his experiences on the front ranks and shares them in great detail in his book Red Road From Stalingrad. By describing all the things that are happening in the day to day combat, Abdulin is also giving the readers a glimpse at himself. He tells of mental and physical aspects of battle and shows how it effects all involved. His descriptions and feelings bring the readers into his mind and heart and they see the real Abdulin. His intent is to show and share the “real” life of war and battle. He cares for the cause and is a strong passionate Soviet soldier; however he also creates a different kind of hero by letting his loyalty and conscience to be his guide.

Blood Red Snow, by Gunter K. Koschorrek is a graphic rendition of the German War in the Eastern front, which began in 1942. Koschorrek is a former German soldier who kept a frequent account of his experience in the steppes of Russia and the advancement of the German battalion in Stalingrad. Written as a memoir, Koschorrek’s writing serves as a first hand account of the tank and cavalry warfare in the Eastern front. Rather than glorifying the heroic aspects of death and destruction in war, Koschorrek’s strives to give a realistic account of the bitter struggle and retreat of the German army during World War II. His documentation of his experiences in Blood Red Snow serves as a tribute to the survivors as well as the fallen soldiers of the

Were it a testimony to the rigors and cruelness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, besides perhaps Anne Franke`s diary and the testimony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done. The prisoners of the labor camp, as in Shukhov?s predicament, were required to behave as Soviets or face severe punishment. In an almost satirical tone Buinovsky exclaims to the squadron that ?You?re not behaving like Soviet People,? and went on saying, ?You?re not behaving like communist.? (28) This type of internal monologue clearly persuades a tone of aggravation and sarcasm directly associated to the oppression?s of communism.

As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.

While this may be the case for the more information-limited Soviet historians, the more modern, revisionist historians such as Edward Acton, Robert Service, Harold Shukman and Steven Smith have had great exposure to much of the confidential literature, kept secret by the many Soviet Purges and the prolific ‘Iron Curtain’. In the view of Acton “Russia’s workers were

In this young an emerging field, “concepts are either imported from the neighbouring fields of Holocaust studies or postcolonial studies or invented anew” (Etkind, “Magical Historicism” 632). Since the Russo-Chechen conflict, which emerged from the “tensions between the desire for autonomy and a history of dependence” (Chioni Moore 112), is postcolonial in its nature, it becomes important, when choosing the methodology, to keep in mind that more than a decade after the end of armed conflict with Russia, the Chechen society is still strongly divided between competing narratives. Thus, “separatists make tragic events central identity markers, the supporters of a radical Islam or traditionalist narrative promote the religious view, and the pro-Russians highlight Russian contributions to the development of Chechnya” (Campana 142). Each of the narratives produces its own vision of Chechen history and identity. Considering that, the methodology of Alexander Etkind, who focuses his research on the individual memories and narratives (Wakamiya), and on the concept of mourning, is one of the most applicable. Paying attention to personal stories provides the place for the memory of the Chechens themselves (and not media-conveyed narratives), and allows to escape the separation between the four narratives, outlined by Campana, as well as to prevent further memory wars between them. The choice of a case study, the novel Tonkaya Serebristaya Nit’ (2015), allows to apply this methodology: Zherebtsova tells stories of private people, whom she knew during the Russo-Chechen

The final film of this analysis of the war historical narrative and by extension the Soviet historical narrative falls into a similar category as The Cranes are Flying. Grigori Chukhrai’s 1959 film Ballad of a Soldier, released two years after the release of Kalatozov’s The Cranes are Flying, the film also was a product of the Thaw and caries similar themes to those in Kalatozov’s film. While there are differences, the end result is the same, both films depict a historical narrative of the War that removes the hero worship of Stalinism and depict the War through a more humanistic lens. The film opens up with a mother looking down a road. The narrator explains that her son, Alyosha, went off to war and never returned. Even so, here she stands,

“I felt the agony of the other soldiers around me as they fell onto their knees which then hit the ground, as the gunshots beat our eardrums till they were bleeding out, and as hardened men sobbed, knowing they would not see their loved ones again. As I saw through my peripherals, my comrades fall one by one, as I was stuck there, in slow motion, helpless. I ran, everyone made me out to be the only survivor of my squad one of the worst battles ever. The lone survivor of the Battle of Stalingrad, that’s what I supposedly was when I was 14, in my battle worn, blood stained, clothes. That was WWII, not something I want to remember. Listen Victor, no matter what bone cancer does, I will always be with you and you will feel that I’m with