Anna Timofeeva-Egorova - Over Fields of Fire

‘Yes, your party membership card is kept here. I’ll hand it over to you now!’ A man from the Political Department moved to a safe as he said it. ‘By the way, in which hospital were you treated?’

‘I was in captivity…’

The officer’s face became stern, he slowly opened the safe and locked it straightaway: ‘I’m not giving you the Party membership card! Apply to the Party Commission.’

‘Which one? Why?’

‘We don’t have POWs, we have traitors! Leave the premises…’

I went out. I felt so bitter, so insulted… I walked by the Kremlin wall, sat on a bench in the Alexandrovskiy Garden. There was a roaring in my ears… Then I seemed to calm down, but the tears kept falling. I couldn’t stop them at all, I was shivering as if in a fever, my teeth were chattering… I remember a militia man 179 179 Translator’s note — policeman. came up to me and asked: ‘What’s happened? Are you alright? I’ll call an ambulance now!’

‘No, no’, I replied. ‘Help me get home…’ Thus, in a militia vehicle, I made it to my home at Arbat Street, 35. Ekaterina Vasilievna saw me, began to wail, put me to bed, gave me some powders to drink and I fell asleep…”

“And what happened next?” Andrey Konyakhin asked impatiently, clenching his fists. “What happened next?”

“Next? Two days after my visit to the Moscow Garrison Depots and Construction Political Department I was urgently summoned by telephone to the Moscow Military District Air Force, which was under the command of Vasiliy Stalin 180 180 Translator’s note — Stalin’s younger son — an Air Force General. . Why ‘urgently’? Because Vasiliy Iosifovich had written with his own hand on my letter to the Military Disctrict: ‘I think Egorova is right’.”

“And what happened after that?”

Here my husband begged: “Guys! Let’s change the record. It’d be better for you to tell what’s happened in your lives after the war, for Anna is getting upset telling you all this, and you’re grinding your fists into the table yourselves! Everyone’s nerves are at breaking point since the war…”

“You’re right, Vyacheslav Arsenievich”, Kabisher said. “It’s not easy to relive that abuse with her.”

But I decided to finish my story about the Party membership card… “So, there was no decision after the Party Commission in the Moscow Military District. The Party Commission of the land forces was inquiring into it, and were at a loss.”

“And then what?”

“Then there was a Party Board session in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, chaired by Shkiryatov — the head of Party Control. We were living in Obukhovo by then. The Board consisted of thirty men, if not more. In front of me the Chairman advised this Board that I had parachuted from my plane to the Germans… with a mission [from them]! I stood up and shouted: “Lies!” Everyone looked at me as if at a sworn enemy… In a word, they decided in the Central Committee: ‘You will receive a verdict in the Noginskiy District Party Committee at your place of residence’.”

“And what was the verdict?” My comrades asked in one voice.

“It was clear ‘Refusal of reinstatement as a Party member’. But I was pleased even with this verdict. They might have put me behind bars! They could have done anything… And I had already had two kids then.”

“And after that you sat as quiet as a mouse?”

“No, not at all. A year later I wrote another letter to the Party Central Committee, although all my friends and acquaintances were talking me out of it. ‘What do you need all this for?’ my husband was saying too. ‘Take care of your health, to raise our sons!’

And then they summoned me to the Party Central Committee again. There was another Party investigator this time — KGB Colonel Leonov. He received me very civilly: seated me on a couch, sat down next to me, showed me photographs of his two daughters, asked me about my husband and children. And then he began to question me on how I had found myself in German captivity.

‘Is it all really true?’ The Colonel wondered then. ‘Just yesterday an airman was sitting here and telling me he was as clean as a new pin, and at that time in my desk there were documents that discredited him.’

‘I am confident, Comrade Colonel, that in your desk there are no documents discrediting my name!’ I said sharply.

‘Alright, you may go now. Now wait to be summoned to the Party Board of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.’

This time the Party Board was very formidable — about twenty-five men. My thanks to Colonel Leonov: he reported everything honestly. And such was the verdict: ‘Taking into account her services to the motherland, she may join afresh in accordance with standard procedure’. Finding out about such a resolution of my case, people began to send and bring me recommendations: Dyachenko, the former head of the Political Department of the 197th Division; the Chief-of-Staff of our 805th Ground Attack Regiment Colonel Yashkin; the senior surgeon of the local hospital in Obukhovo — a Communist since 1917 who had done 10 years in the camps as an ‘enemy of the people’ and been exonerated during Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’; Leonov and many others… But I was obstinate again and didn’t want to join the Party afresh. And on top of that the Poles sent me the ‘Silver Cross of Merit’ which I had been awarded in May 1945. The Awards Department of the Ministry of Defence found me and handed over their debt — the Order of The Great Patriotic War, 1st Class…

The kids grew up healthy, but I was sick very often back then, so my ‘menfolk’ learned to do everything themselves at home. Igor would go shopping, Petya would do the housework and cook lunches. Vyacheslav Arsenievich had already written two books: ‘The Sturmoviks ’ and ‘Comrades Airmen’.

“After the XX Party Congress 181 181 Translator’s note — held in 1956, Stalin’s ‘excesses’ were condemned there for the first time. , I wrote to the Party Central Committee again”, I went on. “I requested justice be done. They replied very quickly with a phone call: ‘Your letter has been received. When will you be able to come and see us?’ I replied that my son had a cold and I was unable to come for now.’

‘Write down our phone number. When you have a chance to come — give us a ring, we’ll order you a pass.’

On the second day I couldn’t restrain myself and rang them up myself. “Come to Moscow”, they answered, “to the Staraya Square, 4”, and they gave me the entrance number, telling me the floor and the office…

I went. They received me very civilly again, but I kept my ears pricked. First they asked me about home, family, how my medical treatment was going, enquired about many other matters. Then they asked a short question: “Do you feel hard done by?”

“It would be quite an underestimation to put it that way…”

“Well, Comrade Egorova Anna Alexandrovna, we will be reinstating you as a Party Member… You will have to come to the Party Board once again.”

“No, I won’t do that! There have already been two trials, a just one and an unjust one!” — and I told them about Shkiryatov’s ‘Star Chamber’.

“It’ll be a formality”, they said gently. “There will only four or five people. A verdict in your presence is required — and that will be it.”

“Alright then, I’ll be there.”

When I arrived and saw in reception the former head of the Political Department of the 197th Ground Attack Division Ivan Mironovich Dyachenko, by whose orders his deputy had taken away from me my Party membership card, I felt ill at ease. But I saw that for some reason Dyachenko’s hands and legs were trembling. I began to calm him down as best I could, and at that moment they called us to the Boardroom.