The library of the project "History of the Russian State" is the best monuments of world literature recommended by Boris Akunin, which reflect the biography of our country, from its very origins.

Time recreated in historical stories Vera Panova, – Kievan, Vladimir-Suzdal and Moscow Rus. The Kiev princess Olga and the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery Theodosius were canonized by the church and canonized. The story "Who Dies", telling about the last days of the Moscow autocrat Vasily III, the father of Ivan the Terrible, is rightfully ranked among the best examples of historical prose. Behind the iconographic faces darkened by time, Panova saw living human faces with their deep experiences and spiritual impulses. According to K. Simonov, Vera Panova’s stories are “real history, in all the cruelest interweaving of its contradictions, clashes, destinies, views, passions.”

Vera Panova
The Tale of Olga (collection)

The Tale of Olga

Youth. Marriage

There was transportation on the Velikaya River near the Vybutskaya Vesy, near the city of Pskov.

There are many boats, and with the boats there are oarsmen, stout men on pay, and the pay is good.

Over the rowers there is a chief appointed by the princes.

The boss had a daughter, a little girl named Olga.

In summer and autumn she lived with her parents during transportation, on the shore. When she became Great, the family moved to Pskov, to a winter home.

The chief only came out of the winter house to fight with his fists, otherwise he would rest on the stove; He was either asleep or sitting there with his legs dangling. And Olga’s mother dressed her warmly and let her go outside to play with the children.

Here Olga is walking along a snowy street between high tins and smoking piles of horse manure, wrapped in a scarf. Here she is dragging the sled onto the slide to slide down. She is wearing a sheepskin coat, and underneath the sheepskin coat is a ruffled cloth dress trimmed with green and red braid. She walks, and the backs of her felt boots throw up the hem. These butts look like the heels of a bear cub.

It was summer.

Horsemen rode up to the carriage: in chain mail, helmets, a shield at the left shoulder. One horse has harness with silver plaques and moons. Other horses were carrying luggage behind them.

The boss came out, wiping his mustache: he was just sitting at lunch. The rowers, also wiping themselves off, ran to the boats. Horseshoes clattered on the log flooring, and the riders began to descend towards the Great. Olga stood next to her father, she threw her braid over her chest and played with her ribbons.

The one whose horse walked in silver stopped and asked his father:

- Your daughter?

And he praised:

“It’s too early for her,” said the father. - We'll see there.

“Don’t give it away,” the rider said again and rode on.

He wore his helmet low, down to his eyebrows. Severe eyebrows hung over his eyes. The beard was scattered across the chain mail like a mighty broom. A boot, stuck in a stirrup, floated past Olga’s eyes. A horse's heavy side swam by.

Olga watched as the packs were taken off the horses and how the familiar, smart horses cautiously stepped into the boats, and the boats set sail one after another. Beards and horse manes fluttered in the frisky wind.

She grew up and the time came for her to get married.

News of this was sent to Kyiv.

The matchmakers arrived from Kyiv without delay.

They brought gifts to her father, and to her too—dresses, pearls, and took her to be Prince Igor’s wife.

She was happy with both the clothes and the marriage.

Throwing her head and shoulders back, she walked down the floor in high heels, followed by her relatives: aunts and uncles with children, cousins, second cousins.

And they swam by rivers and galloped by land.

Earthen cities stood near rivers.

The fishermen were pulling the net. Washerwomen on rafts beat linen with rollers.

Birds flew by in gray and white clouds.

And at night they sailed, and, as in a cradle, there was a sweet dream under a canvas canopy, in blankets that smelled of animals.

A new day was breaking out beyond the forest left hand. Olga opened her eyes, and the rosy faces of the little girls who were traveling with her smiled out of the fog. They dipped their fingers into the jets overboard, washed their faces, and refreshed their necks.

An elk emerged from the fog on the shore, darkening with its steep chest and magnificent antlers.

These knights, they told Olga, are her squad.

And old Guda, who came for her, will serve her.

She will have her own villages, and herds, and many servants.

When it was necessary to get out of the boats and ride on horseback, old Guda took her on his horse. And on both sides rode a squad in chain mail and helmets, a shield at the shoulder.

At first she froze when Igor appeared in front of her, a fathom tall, everything on his face was large and masculine: nose, mouth, cheeks, folds along the cheeks. Yellow hair flowed down to his chest and shoulders. The hands were white and long-fingered. He reached out to her with these hands, she jumped up, lay flat against the wall, every vein in her was afraid and thrashing.

And he laughed and beckoned her long arms, and she, although she was trembling more and more, began to laugh too and went into his arms.

They lived in spacious mansions. They had a vestibule on painted pillars and a tower from which you could see far away. The rooms are decorated with carpets and embroideries, brocade pillows and expensive dishes. How many buildings stood around the yard, how many pots were drying on the palisade! A new bathhouse was built for Olga, made of oak logs, heated in white, like white silk there were brand new linden benches.

They also had an estate outside the city. There they kept most of their livestock. Mares and cows grazed there, oxen were fattened in the cowsheds, and chickens, geese, and ducks roamed in large numbers in the enclosures. Hundreds of stacks stood on the threshing floor, stacks from the current harvest and from previous ones. The buildings near the forge contain iron and copper.

The most valuable things were kept in the city. Olga could, whenever she wanted, ask for the keys and check if everything was in place. But there was no need to check, old Guda took better care of her property than she would have taken care of it herself, the housekeepers were in awe of him. He also served Rurik, Igor’s father. Guda himself could have been a king and kept a squad. But in the very first battle with the Novgorodians, some hero broke half of his bones with a club. And although they grew together, Guda could no longer fight, and Rurik took him to his house. As evidence of his former power and former hopes, Guda kept a huge sword in a rusty sheath; the sword had a name, like a person: Alvad.

There weren’t many such free servants in the house: they were all slaves. Those from war booty, those bought at a high price - all sorts of artisans: those who knew how to sew clothes well, to compose medicines; guslars, goldsmiths.

Olga and Igor got up when it was clear. Having cleaned up properly, they sat down at the table with the squad. After breakfast, Igor went to look at the farm and sort out the quarrels, and Olga swung with the girls on a swing and cracked nuts. Before noon we had lunch, then slept. Then they had dinner at home or feasted at a party - with one of the boyars, with Mr. Oleg himself. Here it was necessary to wear rich outfits, necklaces and golden shoes. During the feast, they were amused by singers and buffoons, visiting tightrope walkers and learned bears. Igor returned from feasts not remembering himself, it happened that they carried him into the bedroom in their arms. At the same time, Olga was attacked by laughter, burst into tears, and could not calm down.

Published: 08/31/2016

August 31 marks the 20th anniversary of the Khasavyurt truce, which ended the first Chechen war, the next stage of the great North Caucasian tragedy. Pre-perestroika Grozny, the 1995-1996 campaigns and the fate of the famous human rights activist and journalist Natalya Estemirova, to one degree or another, turned out to be facts of the biography of a resident of an ancient Central Ural town.

Morning of the dogs barking

A board from a cartridge box, thrown into a pre-dawn fire, flared up and took the shape of a bony bear’s paw drying up in the fire, and I remembered the elderly militant detained by our fighters. Handcuffed, sitting by the fire, swaying slightly, he whispered almost silently: “I told them, don’t wake up the Russian bear. Let him sleep. But no, they kicked him out of the den.” The Chechen looked with longing at the corpses of his own. His entire reconnaissance group was destroyed, falling into an ambush, which the special forces of the internal troops skillfully prepared for them. Professor Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov said the same thing, only in different words, to Dudayev, who announced gazavat. “Save Checheno-Ingushetia from a new tragedy. Resolve the issues of the crisis of power within the framework of the Constitution,” he said in 1991. But Dzhokhar still called tens of thousands of people to arms. Many of these Chechen “wolves” and “wolf cubs” were torn apart by “bear paws”.

Avtorkhanov, the suffered historian, knowledgeable about Russia and his people, proposed to adopt eastern wisdom and diplomacy. But the leadership of the militants overestimated themselves. They named Lenin Avenue after Avtorkhanov. Grozny had not yet been destroyed. Now, in the receding darkness and fog, hiding from our eyes the Sunzha and the ruins of houses along its banks, the city shocked with restlessness, defenselessness against the power of two sides.

“...I'm going on a business trip soon. I have a bad feeling in my heart. The first funeral came to the detachment. They burned our column. Our guys died. The Czechs burned them alive, shell-shocked, in an armored personnel carrier. The column commander was hit in the head. Thus began the second war for our detachment. I felt sad and had a bad feeling. I began to prepare for it, I just knew what awaited us.”

...Faces received information about some suicide bombers. We went there, to this village, and took three stoned women. One was about forty years old, she was their recruiter, the main one. All three of them were on drugs because they all smiled at us. They were interrogated at the base. The eldest didn’t want to admit anything, and then, when they put an electric shock in her panties, she began to speak. It became clear that they were planning to carry out terrorist attacks to blow up themselves and many people at our home. They have documents and found a lot of things in the house. We shot them, and sprayed the corpses with TNT so that there would be no traces at all. This was unpleasant for me; I had never touched or killed women before. But they themselves got what they asked for..."

Going on a business trip soon. I have a bad feeling in my heart. The first funeral came to the detachment. They burned our column. Our guys died. The Czechs burned them alive, shell-shocked, in an armored personnel carrier. The column commander was hit in the head. Thus began the second war for our detachment. I felt sad and had a bad feeling. I began to prepare for it, I just knew what awaited us.

Suddenly, the militants’ PK started working from the roof of the house, one of ours shouted in time for me to lie down, the bullets passed above me, their melodic flight could be heard. The boys began to hammer back, covering me, I crawled. Everything was done instinctively, I wanted to survive and that’s why I crawled. When he reached them, they began to shoot at the machine gunner with grenade launchers. The slate scattered and he fell silent; I don’t know what happened to him. We retreated to our original positions.

For me it was the first fight, it was scary, only idiots are not scared. Fear is an instinct of self-preservation, it helps to survive. The boys who get into trouble with you also help you survive. They slept right in the snow, placing boards under them, huddled together. There was frost and wind. A person gets used to everything, survives everywhere, depending on his preparation and internal capabilities. They made a fire and lay down near it. At night they fired at the village with grenade launchers and slept in shifts.

In the morning we went along the same route again, and I remembered yesterday’s battle. I saw those locals who showed the militants the way. They silently looked at us, we at them. Everyone had hatred and anger in their eyes. We passed this street without any incidents. We entered the center of the village and began to move towards the hospital, where the militants were holed up.

On the way, they cleaned out the boiler room. Severed fingers and other body parts were lying everywhere, and there was blood everywhere. When approaching the hospital, the locals said that they had a captured soldier; the militants broke his legs and arms so that he would not go anywhere. When the group approached the hospital, it was already occupied by our troops. We were given the task of guarding a basement with wounded militants; there were about 30 people there.

When I went down there, there were many wounded Chechen fighters there. There were Russians among them, I don’t know why they fought against us. They looked at me with such hatred and anger that my hand itself squeezed the machine gun. I left there and placed our sniper near the entrance. And they began to wait for further orders. When I was standing near the basement, two women approached me and asked me to give one wounded man to their home. I was a little confused by this request. I don't know why I agreed to this. I will probably never answer. I felt sorry for these women, I could have shot him, but they, the locals, saved our wounded soldier. Maybe in return.

After that, the Ministry of Justice came to pick up these wounded. It was a truly disgusting picture. They were afraid to go into the basement first and told me to go in first. Realizing that the riot police were in no danger, they began to drag them out, strip them naked and put them in a paddy wagon. Some walked on their own, some were beaten and dragged upstairs. One militant came out on his own. He had no feet, he walked on his stumps, reached the fence and lost consciousness. They beat him, stripped him naked and put him in a paddy wagon. I didn’t feel sorry for them, I was just disgusted to look at this scene.

We took this village into a ring and dug in right in the field. Snow, mud and slush, but we dug in and spent the night. At night I inspected the positions. Everyone was freezing, but they lay in their trenches. In the morning we went to the village again, clearing all the houses along the way. There the ground was boiling with bullets. Our patrol was cut off as always. The militants went on the attack. We fell like the Germans in 1941. The grenade launcher actually ran out in front of them, yelled: “Shot,” and launched a grenade launcher at them. Suddenly my friend, a sniper, came running, he was wounded in the chest and head.

Another one of ours remained there; he was shot in both legs, and he lay there shooting back. My friend fell onto my lap and whispered: “Brother, save me. I’m dying,” and fell silent. I injected him with promedol. Pushing him on the shoulder, I tell him: “Everything is fine. You’re still going to get me drunk for demobilization.” Having cut off the armor, I told the two shooters to drag it to the house where ours were. We reached a grid that, instead of a fence, divided the distance between the houses. They were overtaken by machine gun fire. One was hit in the arm, the other in the legs. And the whole line fell right on my friend, because he was in the middle. They left him near the chain-link.

Having collected all the wounded, they began to slowly crawl away from the house, because the house was already collapsing. We shot back at the corner of the house. Our people threw all the wounded over the chain link. What remains is my friend's body. They opened fire on us again. We lay down. Near the opening of the wall where we crawled, the machine gunner who was covering us was hit in the neck by a bullet, he fell, covered in blood. We later evacuated all the wounded along the road, covering ourselves with an armored personnel carrier. My friend passed away. We found out this later, but while the battle was going on. We fired back.

We drove to the starting point in the armored personnel carrier. We spent the night with the 1st group. They lost 7 people in the battle; it was even harder for them during the day. We sat down near the fire and dried ourselves in silence. I took out a bottle of Chekhov's vodka, they commemorated it in silence and silently went off to sleep in all directions. Everyone was waiting for tomorrow. Near the fire, the boys talked about those who died in the 1st group. I have never seen or heard anything like this before. Russia did not appreciate this heroism, just like the feat of all the guys who fought in Chechnya.

I was struck by the words of one idiot general. He was asked why the submariners who sank on the Kursk were paid 700 thousand rubles to their families, but the families of those killed in Chechnya have still not been paid anything. So he answered that these were unplanned victims, but in Chechnya they were planned. This means that we, who fulfilled our duty in Chechnya, are already planned victims. And there are a lot of such freak generals. It was always just the soldier who suffered. And in the army there have always been two opinions: those who gave orders, and those who carried them out, and that’s us.

After spending the night, they brought us food and our water - it relieved the tension of yesterday's battle a little. Having regrouped, we entered the village along the same routes. We were following the footsteps of yesterday's battle. Everything in the house where we were was burned out. There was a lot of blood, spent cartridges, and torn bulletproof vests all around. Going behind our house, we found the corpses of militants.

They were hidden in holes in the corn. Wounded mercenaries were found in one of the basements. They were from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Perm. They shouted to us not to kill them, they have families, children at home. It was as if we had escaped from an orphanage into this hole. We shot them all. We left the village at night. Everything was burning and smoldering. So another village was wiped out by the war. There was a gloomy feeling in my soul from what I saw. During that battle, the militants lost 168 people.

I was so cold that I couldn’t pull my hands out of my pockets. Someone took out a flask of alcohol and offered to warm us up; we just had to dilute it. We sent two people to the ditch. One began to collect water, the other remained on cover. And at that time about 15 militants came down to meet them. The distance was 25-30 meters, it was twilight, and everything was visible. They walked boldly into the open and without patrol. They were stunned when they saw us and stood up. Our guys rushed back to us. The militants did not shoot. I started waking up the guys.

We struck first from the KPVT. The battle has begun. I sat down near the front wheel of the armored personnel carrier and began to shoot. Our machine gunner started working, hit the tank, and the militants began to retreat. They had many wounded and killed. The tank gunner was not oriented in the dark, and I ran towards him and came under fire from the tank. I was pretty shell-shocked. I couldn’t come to my senses for about 20 minutes. They pulled me away.

I crawled up to the machine gunner and exchanged fire with him. We had a heavy fire. In response, the militants hit the tank in front of it with a grenade launcher. But if they didn't hit him, let's keep shooting. The battle went on for about an hour. In the morning we were stunned; there were bloody trails in front of us. They pulled their own. The severed body parts were chopped up by KPVT and me. We ran up and began collecting trophies - machine guns, grenade launchers, unloading gear. Suddenly, shots and grenade explosions were heard. It turns out that the militants were wounded and were ambushed by us. There were two surviving militants who were seriously wounded, and they blew themselves up along with the wounded.

That night there was an attempt to break through by a small group of 3 people. They came towards our group, a patrolman stopped them, asking them for the password in the dark, they threw a grenade at him, it bounced off a tree and fell next to the group’s location, and from there the PC immediately started working, the machine gunner also hit this group from his PC . They were all riddled with holes. The next morning, the “screen stars” came running - riot police, through whom they passed unnoticed, and began to pose with the corpses of the militants and take photographs. Goats...

Many empty beds with candles and photographs of the guys appeared in the squad. In the detachment we remembered everyone and remembered them alive. My heart was heavy. Having lost our guys, we survived. We sat and walked together, and now they are gone. Only memories remain. There was a man, and now he is gone. This death snapped its teeth nearby and took for itself who it liked. Sometimes you get used to the idea that you yourself will someday end up there and your body will turn to dust. Sometimes you want to feel your friend next to you, to sit and hang your jaw, but he’s not there, there’s only one filming left, where their faces are alive. They were all great guys, and if we forget them, they will definitely die. Rest forever, brothers. We won't forget you, we'll see you there someday.

According to the radio from the commander of the 2nd group, one militant came out saying that Allah knows better and he sees who is fighting for the faith, and it became clear that our brother was killed. We followed their route, the detachment commander yelled for us to go faster, but they were hitting us from 2 sides - from the forest and from the neighboring street. We walked through the houses. We split into groups and went forward.

It was heard that the battle was going on somewhere ahead. We wanted to go out to the gardens, but they hit us again from the forest from the border. Suddenly shadows flashed ahead of us. One was in the window, the other darted into the basement. I mechanically threw a grenade there, and Smoked hit the windows with a burst of fire. When we went to look at the results, there were 2 corpses - a grandfather and a grandmother. No luck. There was another attempt to break through, but it also did not yield anything. The corpses (of the spirits) were then cut: ears, noses. The soldiers went wild with everything that was happening.

In the morning, my friend and I were called to headquarters. They said it was for escort. We went to headquarters dissatisfied, because after 2 hours the convoy was leaving, and we were sent for some kind of escort. We came there, and the major general of our division presented us with our first awards - a medal ... for a special operation back in October 1999. This was a surprise for us. Having hung it on our chests, we set off in a column. Having paid the conductor 500 rubles on top, we piled into the carriage. Having laid out all our things, we threw the medals into a glass of vodka and began to wash them. The dead guys were remembered with a third toast, and everyone fell asleep where they could. That business trip was too difficult for us.

After everything I had experienced, I began to drink heavily. I often began to quarrel with my wife, although she was pregnant, I still had a blast full blast. I didn't know what would happen to me on my next business trip. With my friend who moved in with me, we had a blast. I didn't even try to stop. It broke inside me, and I began to treat everything coldly. He came home at night and tipsy.

My wife was getting more and more upset and we were arguing. She was crying. I couldn't even calm her down. The days were approaching a new business trip, and I couldn’t stop, I didn’t know what would happen there. It is difficult for me to describe this period, because it was full of contradictions, emotions, quarrels and experiences. Especially the last day before a business trip. I went to the base, where we got drunk and drank until the morning.

I arrived home at about seven in the morning, there was 1.5 hours before departure. Having opened the door, I immediately received a slap in the face from my wife. She waited for me all night, even prepared the table. I silently took my things and left for the train without even saying goodbye. There were too many quarrels and worries during this period. On the train, our shift was walking, I lay on the shelf and realized everything that had happened to me. It was hard and painful inside, but the past could no longer be returned or corrected, and it was even more painful...

On the way, some slept, some drank, some wandered from car to car with nothing to do. We arrived in..., it’s winter outside. Snow and frost. Unloaded. One half of the squad flew on turntables, the other went under its own power. It was cold to ride on armor, but it was necessary. We unloaded the BC and drove off. Spent the night in... shelf.

We were accommodated in the gym and slept on the floor in sleeping bags. We sat down at a small table, made a cocktail - 50 g of alcohol, 200 g of beer and 50 g of brine - and warmed up, which made some of us crazy and fought among ourselves. It was hard to wake up in the morning, but on the parade ground we made a special forces “business card”, and a machine gunner with a PC fired a burst into the air. After all these adventures, this regiment was in shock, it seems that no one organized such concerts, they will remember us for a long time. Yes, this is how special forces should conduct things.

The faces received information about some suicide bombers. We went there to this village and took three stoned women. One was about forty years old, she was their recruiter, the main one. All three of them were on drugs because they all smiled at us. They were interrogated at the base.

The eldest didn’t want to admit anything, and then, when they put an electric shock in her panties, she began to speak. It became clear that they were planning to carry out terrorist attacks to blow up themselves and many people at our home. They have documents and found a lot of things in the house. We shot them, and sprayed the corpses with TNT so that there would be no traces at all. This was unpleasant for me; I had never touched or killed women before. But they themselves got what they asked for.

The squad has been through too much. We lost about 30 people killed and about 80 wounded. And this is too much not only for the detachment, but also for the mothers of the victims. But you can’t answer the question of why you remained alive and my son died, and no one will answer this question. It was too hard to look the mothers in the eyes. But nothing can be done or changed. We were woken up at 4 am. A reconnaissance ambush captured a messenger at a water pumping station, and there was a shootout. We needed to go there and pick up the abandoned SVD and the prisoner.

We went there again. It was raining. Having taken him, he turned out to be a young Czech, about 15 years old, we tortured him. I shot at him, that is. next to his head, and [he] began to betray everyone. He gave us information about their camps, caches and several messengers and a signalman. While we were interrogating him, we were fired upon from the forest, we prepared for battle, but nothing happened. We began to develop this information.

To check the authenticity, we decided to take the cache, and then the addresses. With the 1st group, we went to the village with 4 boxes and quickly took the cache. There were 2 “bumblebees”, 8 kg TNT and an 82 mm mine, this was enough to save someone’s life. And then we went to the address of the militants’ signalman. We quickly burst into the house, cordoning it off on all sides. He was found in an abandoned house nearby. We dragged him to the armored personnel carrier. The Czech who handed him over to us identified him, and I held him at gunpoint, pushing a pistol into his ribs.

We quickly turned up and went to the base. After briefly torturing the signalman, he also gave us a lot of addresses. And it was decided to take it right away in hot pursuit. Again we went to the address of the bombers, who were involved in many explosions. Having arrived at the house, they noticed us and began to leave for their gardens. Our group broke into the house, we took it nearby standing houses, covering the assault. Seeing those running away, our patrol opened fire. The assault took one, we took one down, and the eldest left. We picked up the body on a nearby street, no one saw it. And quickly to the base. A crowd of protesters was already gathering.

At the base, all the militants were identified, and information was downloaded from them using a brutal method. They decided to wipe the dead militant off the face of the earth altogether by wrapping him in TNT and blowing him up. This had to be done in the morning, around 4:00, so that there would be no witnesses. All information was transferred to the intelligence department. I wanted to sleep and eat. I fell asleep, I don’t remember, at about 2:00. We sat with a friend over a glass of alcohol. It eased a little, but not for long.

I was woken up at 4:30, I had to remove this militant from the face of the earth. Having wrapped it in cellophane, we went to the Sunzhensky ridge. There they found a pit with swamp slurry. The bullet entered his thigh and came out of his groin; he did not live even half an hour. Throwing him in the middle of the pit, I put a kg of TNT on his face, another between his legs and walked away about 30 meters and connected it to the battery, there was an explosion. We went to explore the place.

There was a corpse smell, and no traces of blood. There are no emotions inside. This is how they go missing. I always felt sorry for the guys. So much loss, so much pain. Sometimes you wonder if all this is in vain, for what purpose and for what purpose. Our homeland will not forget us, but it will not appreciate us either. Now in Chechnya everything is against us - the law, Russia, our prosecutor's office. There is no war, but the guys are dying.

Home again... When I was in the detachment, my friend arrived and said with a chuckle that my wife had given birth. I was completely taken aback by surprise. We went in to wash ourselves, and time dissolved into space. In short, my wife gave birth on Monday, I showed up only 3 days later. She was offended by me, I showed up there tipsy. She asked me to buy her medicine, I went to the pharmacy. We bought what we needed and wandered into a local tavern, and there I was lost for another day... A few days later we took my wife and child home. I took my baby in my arms, such a sweet little thing. I'm glad…

We were taking a break from some left exit. Somewhere in the morning there was a strong explosion and shooting, we were raised to the gun. One group left. It turned out that an armored personnel carrier was blown up by a landmine. 5 people were killed and 4 were injured. The dead were laid on the helipad. Our group went out to look at the dead. There was silence, everyone had their own thoughts. And death was somewhere nearby... Now the war was even tougher. Previously, they at least saw who they were with and knew who to shoot at, but now you have to wait all the time for them to hit you first. This means you are already shooting second.

All around there was one setup and this dirty war, hatred and blood of ordinary soldiers, not the politicians who started it all, but ordinary guys. In addition to this setup, they cheated with money, with military money, just a swamp, in short. And despite this, we did our job and carried out these stupid orders. And they came again on a business trip. Everyone has their own reasons and motives for this. Everyone remained themselves.

In the village, two FSB officers and two from Alpha were killed. The entire nomadic group is removed from operations and thrown into the village. Everyone worked for results to avenge the guys from Alpha. There were strict cleansing operations in the village. At night we brought the Chechens to the filter, and there we worked hard with them. We drove around the village and surrounding areas in the hope of finding the corpses of FSB officers. Then it became a little clearer what exactly happened. In order to verify the information, gigolos and opera faces entered the village.

We drove in two cars. The “six” was the first, the UAZ medical aid was behind. For some reason, in the center of the village, 06 went to the market, and the boozy woman went further. At bazaar 06, militants are blocking and shooting, our only time to broadcast was that “we were blocked.” When the drunk with the alphas entered the market, local women swept the glass and washed off the blood.

Another 5 minutes - and no traces would have been found, but everything had already fallen somewhere as if through the ground. Only on the 2nd day they found the corpses of two faces at the entrance to the village. In the morning, we crossed the bridge in an armored personnel carrier and drove up to the place where everything happened. Next to the corpses stood a burnt 06. The corpses were badly mutilated, apparently they had been tortured. Then they arrived from the Alpha and radioed to their people...

Returning to the base, we were glad that the bridge through which we were traveling was mined and the landmine did not go off. And where the corpses were, a 200-liter barrel with 2 landmines and filled with lead barrels was buried 3 meters away. If it had worked, there would have been many more corpses. In the morning we went to the addresses. They took the first address quickly, two of them. The women turned up the hi-fi, already on the street. A crowd had gathered, but we, having pushed two Czechs, were already flying to the filter outside the village. There they were handed over to the “termites”. We went to another address, took a young Czech and an elderly one. They were thrown out near the filter with bags on their heads, and the fighters kicked them heartily, after which they were given to the faces.

Having left for the village, we received an order to turn around and enter the neighboring one, where a gang of militants was discovered and set up an ambush. Having crossed the river in armored personnel carriers, we entered that village. The brothers from another detachment had already entered into battle with the militants and pressed them tightly, surrounding them, they desperately resisted. And they asked their people for help, in response the militants replied that they should prepare to become “shaheeds”, the surrounded militants did not want to become martyrs, they say, it’s too early, then only Allah will help you, but one group responded and went to help, and we went to them They came out and smashed it.

We were sent to look for a PKK abandoned during a firefight by militants. We didn't find him. And out of anger from everything that was happening, I beat up the militant. He fell to his knees and sobbed that he did not remember where he had been thrown. And we dragged him on a rope, tying him to an armored personnel carrier.

Today is my child's birthday. 5 years. I really wanted to congratulate you, but I was far away. I promised to buy a parrot, but I will only do it when I arrive. I miss you so much, I really miss my family. I know how they wait for their daddy, I once saw my child praying for me. My soul shuddered. Everything was childishly pure and from the heart, I asked God for dad and mom and that everything would be fine with them. This really touched me.

Having arrived at the base, we settled down and had dinner, when they were eating, a shot rang out, as it turned out later, our soldier shot at another who went somewhere at night without knowing the password. The wound was serious, in the stomach, the entrance was as thick as a finger, the exit as thick as a fist. At night they took us to the helicopter. Whether he will survive, I don’t know. The war becomes incomprehensible, its own. And sometimes it comes to the point of absurdity and incomprehensibility, and without meaning, for what and for whom. In the evening I looked at my medal... which was awarded before leaving. It's nice, of course. And it’s nice when you appreciate it on time. I didn’t sleep well, the artillery was hammering in the mountains all night.

In the morning we went to ..., where a soldier killed 2 officers and a cop and fled the unit. We stopped near N, swam and washed, there were two weeks left here - and then we went home. Lately I’ve been really wanting to, I’m probably really bored, I just wanted to do some housework and take my mind off all this crap. We settled down to rest, the locals brought us some food, and as soon as we started eating, we were removed from this place; even the yellowbell had to be picked off in a hurry. We arrived at the same place where we started looking for this freak. And in the dark they had already completed all their work. I passed out, I don’t remember how, looked at the stars and fell asleep.

At about 8 o'clock it became known that this freak had been killed in the morning. I don’t know what he hoped for. The last operation was in N, and then we went to the base. I couldn’t even believe it. We drove through Chechnya coolly, with police lights flashing on armored personnel carriers and an American flag for fun. On this day, everyone was on edge, and we were the best for everyone, no one else was in any trouble. There was excitement around us, our souls were amazing, we were waiting for the shift. On the way, our driver rammed all the Chechen cars, although on the road we caused terror with our armored personnel carriers, and everyone was afraid of us.

I had a bad feeling from the very beginning. The intelligence chief was confident that everything would be fine. That day we went for a swim. And in the evening it began to rain, it felt like, guys, stay at home. ...Our tent was flooded, rats were running around the tent. I still had strong doubts about this whole operation. I couldn’t fall asleep until 2 am - I close my eyes and see only darkness. IN locality We arrived in complete darkness, left the boxes on the edge of the street, and went to the address on foot. The 1st group covered us.

They surrounded the house quietly and quickly climbed over the fence using the assault ladder. In the courtyard, everyone took their place. I walked third from the side, with my friend behind. They quickly dispersed. The group leader had already broken open the doors, and at that time shots were heard from the back of the house. The bullets hit him, and a smoke grenade exploded while he was unloading. Someone pushed me aside and disappeared into the smoke. I crawled on my back out of the yard. The boys pulled out the squad leader.

It was heavy. The bullet passed between the plates in the side and exited just above the heart. We put him on the APC and he drove off. They started checking people - one was missing, so they started looking. There were short lines coming from the house. The house was cordoned off, we didn’t shoot because it was a setup. As it turned out later, we would all have been imprisoned if the house had been demolished. We did not have such rights at that time.

My hands were simply tied. It turned out that there was not even a combat order for this operation. We needed a result. It turned out that our showman, he wanted to settle scores with the one we approached, with our own hands, and for this he promised several AKs to the boss. My friend was lying in front of the door. One bullet entered the head under the helmet, turned it around, and the other entered a vertebra. At one of these moments, he pushed me away from the door and thereby saved my life.

And the station told us that the commander of the assault squad died on takeoff. The doctor said that he would not have survived: the vessels over the heart were torn by the bullet. One single burst came out at him, and only one ended his life. Everything inside me was empty. My premonition did not deceive me. When we arrived at the base, the boys were lying on the takeoff in bags. I opened my friend's bag, took his hand and said, "I'm sorry."

The second lay already swollen in the bag. The boss didn’t even come out to say goodbye to the boys. He was drunk as hell, at that moment I hated him. He always didn’t give a damn about ordinary fighters; he made a name for himself with them. Then he scolded me at the meeting, humiliated me in front of everyone for this operation, making me the extreme in everything, reproaching me with the boys. Bitch. But nothing, nothing lasts forever, someday he will be rewarded for everything and everyone.

You wonder if it’s enough, how much longer you’ll have enough strength. Is it still necessary to take care of your life? To live for my family, children, my beloved wife, who needs to erect a monument for all the suffering with me, experiences, expectations. I probably need to tie it up, or maybe a little more? I don’t want to stop there, I want more, I want peace and prosperity, the comfort of home. I will achieve this.

Another year of my life has passed. The past year has been very bad. Many of my friends died. Those people who were with me in work and life are no longer there. ...Now you think a lot about your life and actions. Maybe the older you get, the more you think about it. Let these lines remain from me. They are my life. My. It’s a pity that if I had done things a little differently in some military encounters, maybe the guys would have survived.

Maybe life takes its toll, fate too. I miss home so much, these business trips are already boring. It turns out that it is easier to fight with an external enemy, i.e. with the one who shoots at you, than with your “enemies” within the squad. It's very sad for me that this happened. He fought, and in an instant everything turned to dust. I gave 14 years of my life to the detachment, I lost a lot and lost many.

(I) have many pleasant memories, but only about those who really gave their lives for the detachment. Time and life, as always, according to their own law, will put everything in its place. It’s a pity that you can’t fix anything about this, but just try not to repeat your mistakes and live normally. My service in the special forces ended. The detachment gave me a lot and took a lot away. I have a lot of memories in my life.

I express my deep gratitude to the Russian officer Vladimir Dobkin, one of the few who did not betray or forget... It was only thanks to his courage that this book was born.

Sergej Hermann
Soldier's mother

Dedicated to mothers whose sons
will never return home.

Aty - baht.
...to the soldiers and officers of the 205th
Budenovskaya motorized rifle brigade,
alive and dead...

The first snow fell in early November. White flakes fell on the icy tents, covering the field, trampled by soldiers' boots and disfigured by the wheels of army tractors, with a snow-white blanket. Despite the late hour, the tent city did not sleep. In the car park, engines roared, and blue smoke poured out of the tin pipes of the potbelly stove. The gray canopy of the tent was thrown back and, wrapped in a spotted pea coat, a man crawled out of the hot, smoky belly. Dancing as he walked and not noticing anything around, he relieved himself a little, then, shivering from the cold, pulled the hem of his peacoat tighter and gasped:
- Lord... Tra-ta-ta, your mother, how good!
Distant stars twinkled mysteriously, the moon, bitten at the edges, illuminated the earth with a yellowish light. Freezing, the man yawned and, no longer paying attention to anything, slipped into the tent. The guard watched him with an envious glance; there was still more than an hour left before the changing of the guard; all the vodka in the tent had to be finished during this time. The scouts were walking, foreman contract service Romka Gizatulin turned thirty years old.
A hot potbelly stove was raging in the tent, vodka stood on zinc with cartridges covered with newspaper, sliced ​​bread, lard, and sausage lay in large piles. Hot scouts in vests and T-shirts, hugging and knocking their foreheads, sang soulfully to the guitar:
“Russia does not favor us with either fame or rubles. But we are its last soldiers, and that means we must endure until we die. Aty-baty, aty-baty.”
A heavyset man of about forty-five, with a gray head and a drooping Cossack mustache, rummaged under the bunk, took out another bottle, deftly opened the cap, humming to himself,
“I served not for ranks or orders. I don’t like stars for bla-a-at, but I earned the captain’s stars in full, aty-baty, aty-batty.” Then he poured vodka into mugs and glasses and waited for silence:
- Come on, boys, let's drink to military happiness and to simple soldier's luck. I remember during the first campaign I met a conscript boy in the hospital. For a year of fighting, all kinds
changed troops. He entered Grozny as a tanker, the tank was burned, and he ended up in the hospital. After the hospital, he became a Marine, then again fell into the meat grinder, miraculously remained alive and served in the Yurga communications brigade. So I quit as a signalman.
The scouts clinked glasses with assorted glasses and drank together.
- But I remember an incident, also in the first war, we entered the Vedeno region, intelligence reported that there were militants in the village, we were on a tank, two self-propelled guns, infantry were on armor. “The speaker was lying under a blanket, not taking part in the feast, the glare from the burning logs ran across his face. “We are entering Vedeno, but I have thoughts in my head, maybe we’ll take Basayev,” he waited for the laughter, leisurely lit a cigarette, grinned with his memories. “I was young, I thought I’d come home with a medal or order, and there would be talk in the village.” We enter the village from three sides and go straight to Basayev’s house, while everyone is sleeping, the moon is shining just like today. Let's face it - without reconnaissance, without support, without military protection, we take out the gates of the house. I have a tank barrel right into the window. And there was silence in the house, everyone had left, even the dog had been released from its leash.
We walked around the rooms and looked. Then let’s load all sorts of equipment into the cars, TV, video cameras. The “Czechs” fled and didn’t even have time to collect anything; probably someone warned them. Or maybe they listened to our wave. We go down with the platoon commander to the basement, and there is a diplomat on the table. We examined it, no wires were visible, we opened it, and there were dollars, half of the diplomat was filled with money. Our elder almost got sick. I say, maybe we can divide it between everyone, and he, in all seriousness, takes out a pistol and says, now we’ll calculate everything, rewrite it, seal it and hand it over to the command. I suspect that he wanted to accomplish a feat, he kept dreaming of entering the Academy and becoming a general.
A voice came from the stove:
“With that kind of money, he would have become a general even without the Academy.”
- While we were counting these fucking money and sealing it, it was already starting to get light. We’d rather, quickly, I’d like to report to the lieutenant, get into the cars and go ahead. Just at the exit from the village we were hit, the command vehicle was blown up by a landmine, the second one flew into the same crater, while we were turning around, the tracks were broken. Somehow we took up defensive positions and began to fire back. When the ammunition in the first vehicle began to burst, the Czechs left. Our lieutenant was wounded in the stomach, he is crawling, his intestines dragging on the ground behind him, and in his hands is a suitcase with money. At first I thought that the lieutenant had gone crazy, but then I took a closer look, and it turns out that he had handcuffed a diplomat to his hand.
The gray mustache drawled:
- Yes, your lieutenant really wanted to get into the Academy, or maybe he was just principled, there are such people too. I remember this incident...
They didn’t let him finish, the tent flap, covered with ice, rattled, clay-stained boots and the political officer’s face, red from the frost, appeared in the opening. Nobody was surprised at him
began to hide the glasses:
- Sit down with us, commissar, have a drink with the scouts.
The captain looked into the transparent abyss of the glass and touched the gray-haired man by the sleeve of his vest:
- You, Stepanych, are a shot hare, so hold your horses for now. Don’t let me drink anymore, but don’t let me go to bed either, otherwise they’ll be like they’ve been boiled. We're leaving in three hours. We must hold out until we get to the commandant's office.
The political officer downed the glass and, snacking as he went, climbed out of the tent like a spotted bear. Stepanych collected the dishes and put them in one bag:
- Sha! Brothers, let's slowly get ready, we'll be leaving soon.
The rise was announced an hour earlier. We assembled the tents, loaded the remaining firewood and things into the Urals, and hitched the field kitchens to the tractors. The abandoned camp resembled a torn up anthill: thawed patches from tents showed black in the snow trampled by boots, and hungry dogs were prowling around, licking cans. A dirty gray crow sat thoughtfully on a pile of abandoned car tires, carefully watching the people scurrying here and there. One reconnaissance and patrol vehicle stood at the beginning of the column, the other brought up the rear. Stepanych, crimson with anger, leaned out of the hatch of the lead vehicle and, shouting above the roar of the engines, began yelling something, hitting himself on the head and pointing his finger at the command vehicle. The political officer pushed the dozing warrant officer and weapons technician in the side:
-Have you installed machine guns on the BRDM?
The technician began to make excuses:
- I received the machine guns late at night, and even in grease, I didn’t have time to install them.
Without listening to him, the political officer muttered:
“I didn’t have time, that means. It was necessary to raise the scouts at night, they would have set everything up themselves. Now pray that you get there safely, if a mess breaks out, either the “Czechs” will shoot you, or Stepanych will personally put you up against the wall.
Spitting in the direction of the command vehicle, Stepanych climbed inside the BRDM. Flipping the switch on the radio station, he announced:
- Well, boys, if we get there alive, I’ll light the thickest candle for the Lord.
The radio didn't work either. A military traffic police UAZ stood in front of the column, the company commander gave the go-ahead, and the column moved off. Stepanych pulled the zinc with cartridges towards him and began filling the magazines. Andrei Sharapov, the same intelligence officer who did not drink at night, turned the wheel with concentration, purring to himself: “Afghanistan, Moldova and now Chechnya, they left the pain of the morning on their hearts.” Sitting behind the machine gun, Sashka Besedin, nicknamed Bes, suddenly asked:
- Andryukha, didn’t you say yesterday what happened with your dollars?
Sharapov paused, then reluctantly answered:
- The dollars turned out to be counterfeit, or so they told us. I thought a lot about
With this, either the “Czechs” deceived us, leaving a bait so that we would linger, or... or we were simply deceived by our own people.
We drove on in silence. Stepanich, groaning, pulled a bulletproof vest over his peacoat, pulled the mask over his face and climbed onto the armor. The column wriggled like a gray-green snake, engines growled, machine gun barrels looked predatorily and warily along the sides of the road. Without stopping at the checkpoint, we crossed the administrative border with Chechnya, the Minvodsk policemen, on duty and inspecting all transport, saluted the column with their arms bent at the elbow.
Gizatullin leaned out of the open hatch, exposed his sleepy, suffering face to the cold breeze, then handed Stepanych an aluminum flask. He shook his head negatively. The column passed through some village. Behind was a wooden post with a sign that had been shot....-yurt.”
A few minutes later, the BRDM engine sneezed and fell silent, and the column stood up. The company commander ran to the car and swore. Seeing Stepanych, he fell silent. Sharapov was already digging into the engine.
“Commander!” Andrei shouted, turning to Stepanych, “the fuel pump is broken, I’ll try to repair it, but the work will take at least an hour!”
“Here you are, Comrade Major,” said Stepanych, “let’s put the second mess in front and lead the column away.” Leave us your VAZ UAZ, we’ll catch up with you in an hour. He muttered barely audibly: “If we stay alive.” I don’t like all this, oh, I don’t like it.
He took the machine gun off his shoulder and pulled the bolt, forcing the cartridge into the chamber. The column passed by, the scouts in the departing vehicle climbed onto the armor, waving their arms and machine guns. Stepanich ordered:
- So, guardsmen, the relaxation is over. Everyone should load their weapons, don’t go into the forest, don’t lean out from under the cover of armor, snipers and tripwires have not yet been canceled in this war.
Ten minutes passed. The gasket on the fuel pump cover had broken and fuel was not getting into the carburetor. The frozen fingers did not obey, and Sharapov cursed in a low voice.
The warrant officer-traffic inspector was dozing in the UAZ cab, the scouts, as usual dispersed, kept the surrounding area under gunpoint. Gizatullin stopped the red Zhiguli. The driver, a young Chechen, promised to bring a gas pump from Gaz-53. Stepanych did not hear the negotiations; he and Sharapov were digging into the engine. Fifteen to twenty minutes later a Zhiguli car appeared. Gizatullin rubbed his palms happily:
- Let's go now.
Stepanych didn’t like something about the approaching car; he jumped off the armor, moving the machine gun from his shoulder to his stomach. Almost simultaneously with him, not reaching the scouts 50-70 meters, the car skidded on a slippery road and stood sideways. The windows came down, and jets of fire from machine guns hit the scouts' car one after another. Small stinging bullets shredded the icy crust of the road, made holes in the tin of the UAZ, and ricocheted off the armor engulfed in flames. Andrei Sharapov, half hanging from the hatch, lay on the armor, his peacoat was burning on his back. Gizatullina's skull was cut off in a burst. The already dead body was in agony on the white snow, the yellowish brain with red blood streaks was pulsating in the open skull. Besedin's body, pierced by machine gun fire, flew towards the ground, and he slowly dropped to his knees, trying to lift the weapon with his weakened hands. Stepanych's left arm was broken and his face was cut. Growling, he rolled into the road ditch. Blood covered his face, red dots stood and moved in his eyes. The departing car was one of them, and he fired his grenade launcher almost at random. Then, no longer hearing the shots, he kept pressing and pressing the trigger, not noticing that the magazine had run out of cartridges, that the car was burning, throwing up sharp tongues flame. Two more explosions sounded one after another. The doors of the red Zhiguli cars were torn off, they flew several meters away and burned out, smoking black smoke. The snow under the burnt car melted, revealing thawed patches black earth. It was quiet. The white sun shone dimly through the curtain of clouds. At the horizon line, a pall of smoke hung over Grozny, the city was burning. The silence of the morning was broken by the sound of wings and the caw of crows - the birds hurried after their prey. The door of the UAZ slammed, a traffic inspector crawled out of the car, looked with crazy eyes at the scattered bodies, the smoking cars, and crawled towards the forest, scooping up snow with the pockets of his pea coat. Kneeling in front of the dead Besedin, Stepanich tore the bandage wrapper with his teeth, not noticing that the blood had already stopped bubbling on his lips, congealing in the cold and turning into a bloody crust.
Swaying his whole body, Stepanych howled. Falling snowflakes covered motionless bodies, bloody puddles, and spent cartridges with a white fluffy blanket. Gray crows
They walked cautiously, painting the white earth with their footprints.

Modern Calvary

In the summer of 2000 from the Nativity of Christ, along a dusty and rocky road leading to the village of Tengi-Chu, five armed horsemen were chasing three captives. The merciless sun forced all living things to hide, insects and creatures took refuge under stones and in crevices, waiting for the onset of the saving evening cool. In the sultry and viscous silence, only the clatter of hooves and the snoring of horses could be heard. Red-bearded Akhmet, pulling a wide army panama hat over his nose and leaning back in the saddle, purred quietly:
From wine, from naga
Mastagi of Egen
Hi kont osal ma hate.
My dear mother,
The enemies were defeated
And your son is worthy of you.
The slaves, barely moving their weak legs, followed the horses, carried away by a taut rope tied to the saddle. At some distance from them, a leisurely donkey, waving its tail displeasedly, was pulling a rubber cart behind it. The cart jumped, hitting the stones, and then a dull thud was heard, as if someone was hitting the lid of a coffin - thump, thump.
The cart was driven by a freckled boy about twelve years old, in his hands was a single-barreled hunting rifle. The boy pointed it at the prisoners, then laughed loudly, clicking the trigger. The prisoners are exhausted, their thin boyish necks stick out from the collars of their dirty shirts, their broken legs are bleeding. Salty, acrid sweat flows down the cheeks, corroding the dried crust of abrasions and leaving crooked tracks of marks on the skin gray with dust and dirt.
The roofs of houses appeared from behind the ledge of the mountain. The perked-up Akhmet stopped the column, stood up in his stirrups and peered for a long time into the sleepy, deserted streets. Flaring the nostrils of his thin predatory nose, he inhaled the smell of his native village, the smoke of fires, fresh milk, freshly baked bread. Dogs barked in the village, smelling the scent of strangers.
Akhmet shouted something in his guttural language. Two horsemen dismounted and untied the prisoners' hands. Three soldiers sank exhausted onto the road, straight into the hot, gray dust.

From the bottomless depths of the Galaxy, the Father Creator stretched out his hands to the small blue planet, carefully feeling his creation, dispelling the curtains of evil and pain swirling over the Earth.

From behind the stone fences, people silently looked at the thundering cart, silent horsemen with weapons, captive soldiers carrying a huge five-meter cross on their bent backs. Roughly planed pine beams seal their bodies to the ground. Frozen droplets of resin freeze like beads of blood on freshly planed wood. It seems that a dead tree is crying for people who are still alive. Old people, women and children came out of their houses, silently following the procession.
A week ago, conscript soldiers and a warrant officer were captured near Urus-Martan while they were erecting a cross at the site of the death of their political officer. On the square in front of the former village council building; The soldiers laid the cross on the ground, indifferently bumping their shoulders, dug a hole, and strengthened the cross in the ground. People looked at what was happening with a mixed feeling of fear and curiosity. The boys threw stones at the soldiers, the old men, separated from the crowd, leaned on their sticks, poking at the prisoners with calloused, dry fingers. In appearance, the two soldiers were no more than 18-20 years old, their frightened boyish faces turned white with notebook sheets in the approaching dusk. The ensign, a little older in age, continuously swallowed viscous sticky saliva, fighting a fit of mortal fear. The cloudless sky began to become covered with gray clouds, and a light breeze blew.
Akhmet shouted something, the bearded men began to push the soldiers with sticks, forcing them to work faster. The preparations were completed. The conscript boys were placed at the edges of the cross, and the ensign was tied to the crossbar with wire. Akhmet read out a long sheet of paper. “For crimes committed on Chechen territory, murders of people... rapes... robberies... the Sharia court... sentenced...”
The rising wind carries his words to the side, ruffles the sheet of paper, stuffs his mouth, preventing him from speaking “... sentenced, taking into account the circumstances mitigating the guilt... the youth and repentance of the soldiers conscript service Andrei Makarov and Sergei Zvyagintsev to one hundred blows with sticks. Ensign... Russian army...for genocide and extermination of the Chechen people, destruction of mosques and desecration of the sacred Muslim land and faith... to the death penalty...” One of the guards, acting as an executioner, climbed onto a stool and with several short strong blows drove the thick hands into the wrists long nails. I cut through the wire with rusty pliers. The man hanging on the nails groaned and exhaled painfully: “Father.”
The soldiers were immediately laid out on the ground in the square. Long gnarled sticks tore the skin, instantly turning it into bloody rags. The man on the cross was breathing hoarsely and heavily, and a transparent tear trembled on his light eyelashes.
People were going home, bodies lay spread out in the square, and a lopsided cross was terribly white. Dogs were howling in the neighboring houses, the man on the cross was still alive, his body covered with perspiration was breathing, his blood-bitten lips were whispering and calling for someone...
Only Akhmet was left in the deserted square. Rocking from his toes to his heels, he stood for a long time in front of a wheezing man, powerlessly trying to raise his head and say something.
Akhmet pulled a knife from his belt, the bailiff cut his shirt on tiptoe from top to bottom, grinned, noticing a whitening aluminum cross on the boy’s sunken chest:
- Well, soldier, your faith does not save you, where is your god?
“My God is Love, it is eternal,” the blackened lips barely whispered.
Baring his strong yellow teeth, swinging briefly, Akhmet struck with a knife. The sky was torn apart by a terrible roar, thunder struck, and darkness fell to the ground. Drops of rain washed over the dead bodies, washing away the blood and pain. The sky cried, bringing back to earth the tears of mothers mourning their children.

A small fair-headed boy, who looked like his father like two peas in a pod, held his hand:
“Dad, what is God?” he asked.
- God is love, son. If you believe in the Lord and love all living things, then you will live forever, because love does not die.
Long eyelashes trembled, the boy asked:
- Dad, does this mean that I will never die?
Father and son walked along the littered yellow leaves alley, listening to the bells ringing. Life continued as it had two thousand years ago. The small blue planet moved in orbit, repeating its path again and again.

Since the war, there are no return tickets.

The railway station of a small southern town is packed to capacity with people. Started velvet season, the first sign of which is the absence of train tickets.
There are two waiting rooms at the station, one is commercial, the other is general. In a commercial building, people are passing the time and waiting for the train. warm sea, still hot, gentle sun, cheap fruit.
These people expect comfort and peace. Entrance to the hall is paid and there are no annoying gypsy beggars, refugees from Chechnya, homeless vagabonds trying to spend the night, and soldiers returning from the war.
There are several televisions, a clean toilet with paper and towels, a buffet counter where chickens on duty are served, soft buns, beer, coffee. The entrance to this oasis of well-being is guarded by a policeman with rubber baton and a short-barreled machine gun. Next to him sits a girl controller in a brand new railway uniform and a flirty beret. She accepts the entrance fee and makes eyes at the policeman.
In the common room, conscript soldiers and unshaven contract soldiers are lying right on the floor, returning home. There are no tickets, the soldiers cannot board the train for 3-4 days. They sleep right on the floor, with dirty peacoats spread under them and duffel bags under their heads. Having escaped from where just yesterday they were killing and trying to kill them, many begin to drink right there at the station, some hire prostitutes or simply wander the streets lost.
The police and officers do not pay any attention to them. The officers keep to themselves, trying to disperse to hotels or private apartments.
A small non-Russian boy walks around the waiting room. He approaches the passengers and holds out his unwashed palm. His face is grimy, his clothes require washing and repair. Some compassionate old woman comes up to him and hands him a homemade pie. The boy takes the gift, twirls it in his hands and puts it in the trash can. He needs money. Now a special business has appeared in Russia: children ask for alms, then give it to adults. If the child does not bring money, he will be punished.
A red-haired contract sergeant with a scar on his face kicked his duffel bag and went to the railway ticket office. The glass windows are covered with a sign “No tickets”; the cashier with a wide, masculine face shifts bills, not paying any attention to the resigned passengers. The sergeant pushes through the line and knocks on the cloudy glass:
-Girl, I really need a ticket to Novosibirsk.
The cashier, without raising her eyes, answers with an indifferently routine phrase:
-There are no tickets.
The sergeant tries to make a pleading face:
“Girl, I really need to leave, my mother is dying,” and as a final argument,
-Girl, I’m coming back from the war, because I won’t find my mother.
The cashier finally raises her head:
-We have the same rules for everyone, I can’t help your mother.
The sergeant slammed his fist into the plexiglass window, pulled a hand grenade out of his pocket, and looked back at the people frozen in horror. He put it back in his pocket, pulled the knife hanging from his belt out of its sheath, rolled up his left sleeve and hit the vein with the blade. A stream of blood hit the glass, right on the painted mouth screaming something. A woman screamed loudly, the contractor turned white, knelt down and quietly fell to the floor, face forward. Two policemen with machine guns came running in response to the scream, bending over to the lying man, one of them began to tighten his arm with a tourniquet, the other, throwing the knife aside with his foot, quickly and habitually searched his pockets. Having pulled out a grenade, he whistled and began to contact the duty unit on the radio.
At this time, a beggar boy approached the soldiers lying on the floor and habitually extended his hand for money.
“Who did you approach, you non-Russian mug, you damned lump, who are you asking for money from? Go to your Wahhabis, they will give it to you,” yelled a blond soldier who approached with bottles of wine. When the boy rushed to the side, he squatted down. “There, one of our people opened his veins, there was blood, like in a slaughterhouse! God rest with him if he doesn’t survive.”
While the soldiers drank wine from the bottle, the passengers shyly hid their eyes to the side.
Two orderlies with a stretcher approached the contract soldier lying in a pool of blood, accompanied by a fat policeman on duty at the station.
They transferred the body onto a stretcher and wandered indifferently to the car.
The next morning this incident was reported on the Vremya program. One of the passengers managed to film a grimy child begging for alms, soldiers sleeping on a dirty floor, a stretcher with a bloody contract soldier, a station cleaner wiping human blood with a dirty rag. A few hours later, tickets appeared. The boy soldiers, like little ones, jumped on the soft compartment shelves, licked the ice cream and looked like children who had been left unattended by their parents.

The Last Abrek

The lion is stronger than all animals,
The strongest bird is the eagle.
Who, having defeated the weakest,
Wouldn’t you find any prey in them?
The weak wolf comes at those
Who is sometimes stronger than him?
And victory awaits him,
If death - then meeting with
her,
The wolf will die resignedly!
The hunters said that in the mountains, near the village, a huge gray wolf. Old Akhmet, having met him one day on a mountain path, later claimed that the wolf had human eyes. The man and the beast stood for a long time, without moving, silently looking into each other's eyes. Then the wolf lowered its muzzle and trotted down the path. The old man, enchanted, looked after him for a long time, forgetting about the gun hanging behind his back.
Sometimes strange things happened in the mountains. A year ago, the first secretary of the district committee, Narisov, who came with his retinue for a picnic, fell into the abyss. The next night, people in the valley heard a wolf howling all night in the mountains. The crimson disk of the moon, covered with clouds, seemed like a huge bloody stain, ready to fall to the ground. Akhmet could not sleep all night, tossing and turning in his bed.
Exactly thirty years ago, on a February night in 1944, the moon shone like this. Then dogs also howled, buffaloes and cows mooed. This was the year when Stalin evicted all the Vainakhs to the cold Kazakh steppes in one night. Akhmet then lost youngest son. Seventeen-year-old Shamil went hunting, and early in the morning the village was surrounded by Studebakers with soldiers. Since then, Shamil has not heard anything about his son. The eldest, Musa, was killed in the war, the daughter-in-law died on the road, when they were transported for several weeks in cattle cars. In two days she “burned out” from fever. He left in his arms five-year-old Isa, the son of Musa and Aishat. Now a fourteen-year-old great-grandson, also Shamil, came for the summer.
Six months ago, police chief Isa Gelayev was shot dead in the mountains. No one saw it happen, but people said that Gelayev was shot straight in the heart. The killers did not touch his expensive gun, with which he went hunting. He was found by a shepherd from a neighboring village. Then he said that in dead man's eyes Gelayev was frozen in horror, as if before his death he saw
the devil himself. The shepherd also said that next to the body the prints of huge wolf paws were visible. That night, it seems, this wolf also howled.
In the morning Shamil was going to go hunting. Akhmet did not resist. The great-grandson was supposed to grow up to be a real man, like everyone else in the Magomayev family. Old people say that a Chechen is already born with a dagger. Akhmet did not approve of city life and city education. Moscow, where the great-grandson lived, is the spawn of the devil. City men are similar to women, they are just as weak, they also love to sleep on soft feather beds and sofas, and they also love to eat and drink sweets.
Shamil rose before dawn. In the morning I cleaned the double-barreled shotgun and loaded the cartridges. When Akhmet went out into the yard, the boy was playing with his puppy Dzhali, the old man’s heart sank; his great-grandson looked like his missing son like two peas in a pod: the same hair, the same dimple on
cheek, the same crescent-shaped mole near the left eye. Shamil wanted to take his grandfather’s cloak with him, but then he changed his mind - it’s hard to carry. He rolled up the blanket, put it in his bag, and took a soldier’s bowler hat and an ancient dagger. Said:
- Grandfather, I’ll be back from hunting in the morning, don’t worry. I will spend the night in the mountains.
The old man just nodded his head - a man shouldn't talk much.
All day the young hunter climbed the mountains. Jali tagged along behind him. By evening, Shamil shot a kid, skinned it, and lit a fire. The meat was baked on coals. A satisfied dog, sticking out its pink tongue, lay nearby. The stars hung directly overhead. Wrapped in a blanket, the boy dozed off by the fire. Suddenly the wind blew and sharp thunder struck. It began to rain. The burnt coals of the fire hissed under the streams of rain, and the boy was surrounded by pitch darkness. Grabbing a gun and a blanket, Shamil rushed to a niche under a rock, but slipped on a wet stone and rolled down the slope, dropping the gun. He tried to get up, but felt a sharp pain in his leg. Crying in pain, he crawled upstairs. Having reached the rock, he pressed his back against its cooled side, trying to hide from the streams of water.
Tears mixed with raindrops flowed down his cheeks. The frightened puppy huddled nearby. The gun and blanket remained on the slope. The boy began to freeze. His clothes, soaked through, did not provide any warmth, and his thin body was shaken by violent tremors. The sprained ankle was swollen, causing excruciating pain. He hugged the puppy, trying to keep warm. The temperature rose, oblivion alternated with reality. Suddenly, Dzhali, with his ears pricked up, growled, then squealed pitifully, trying to hide behind Shamil. The boy raised his head and saw a huge wolf standing next to him. His eyes glowed with yellow fire, and it seemed to the boy that steam was coming from his sides. The wolf ran for a long time, hot breath escaping from its open mouth.
The little hunter held his breath, the wolf growled and, coming closer, lay down next to him, covering him from the rain with his body. Having warmed up, the boy and the puppy dozed off, not noticing how the rain stopped and morning came. The wolf was also dozing, with his head resting on his front paws, and it seemed that he was thinking about something, trying to make some decision. Suddenly he stood up and licked
hit the boy in the face with a hot tongue and trotted along the path.
A few minutes later people appeared. Akhmet was holding a gun in his hands. Seeing the old man, Djali barked and squealed joyfully, as if trying to say “We are here, we are here!” Don't pass by! The blacksmith Magomed took the boy in his arms and wrapped him in an old cloak that he had taken with him. The boy’s body was burning, he was constantly delirious and whispering: “Grandfather, grandfather, I saw a wolf, he came to me and warmed me. Grandfather, he is not a beast, he is good, he is like a person.”
The upset old man whispered: “He’s delusional, he didn’t save the boy.” Urged Magomed:
- Hurry up, hurry up!
While the boy was sick and lying at home, Akhmet once again went to the place where the boy was caught in a thunderstorm. The prints of huge paws were visible on the dried ground, in a niche under the rock between
Shreds of gray wool stuck out like stones. The old man’s heart was restless, his soul could not find any place. Having sent his recovered grandson to Moscow, he almost never lived at home; he went to the mountains for a week, looking for traces of a strange wolf. Meanwhile, in the villages they began to talk about an unusual beast. People's rumors attributed to him something that did not exist. People believed and did not believe, old people shook their heads - a werewolf, they say, the soul of a man, an abrek who went to the mountains so as not to surrender to the authorities, moved into the body of this wolf.
One day, at the house where Akhmet lived, a district committee Volga braked, and the district committee instructor Makhashev and an unfamiliar elderly man in a formal suit and a medal bar on his jacket got out of the car. The man was about 60 or something like that, gray head, careful look. Something in his figure reminded Akhmet; there was a feeling that they had met somewhere. After greeting, Makhashev introduced the guest:
- Lieutenant General Semenov, from Moscow, fought in our area. I came to hunt, to remember my youth. He needs a guide in the mountains.
The old man didn't hear him; in his eyes there was a picture of the past: a column of trucks stinking of gasoline fumes, slowly rising up the mountain, green figures of soldiers with machine guns in their hands, angrily barking shepherd dogs and above all this, a military man tied with belts, giving orders. The same imperious, attentive gaze, gray temples, confident movements.
The old man stood hunched over, then said with dry lips: “Kanwella epsar” and, dragging his feet, went into the house. The door slammed loudly and the puppy squealed. The instructor wanted to translate the old man’s phrase, but, looking at Semenov, he stopped short. The general stood pale, his lips compressed into a narrow thin strip. Having glanced at Makhashev, Semenov turned and went to the car, the instructor trailing behind.
The old man continued to walk in the mountains, and Semyonov hunted somewhere in the same places. They both scoured the mountains, but their paths did not cross and they never met again. There was a rumor that the general wounded a wolf while hunting. But he failed to take the skin to Moscow. The wounded animal left
to the mountains to lick the wound and gain strength.
One morning, while hunting in the mountains, the old man saw an unfamiliar bearded man walking up a mountain path. Despite the morning coolness, he was naked to the waist. On his powerful, hairy back was a fresh, pale pink bullet scar. He carried a dead goat on his shoulders. The figure of a stranger emerged from the fog and after a few moments, disappeared. The man moved completely silently, and the old man could swear that he had never seen him in any of the nearby villages.
One day in the morning something seemed to push him. The damned moon was peeping into the windows again, preventing me from sleeping. A shot hit the mountains. Jali growled and began scratching at the door. The old man quickly got dressed, grabbed his gun, and hurried after the dog. The dog ran ahead, lowering his muzzle to the ground and howling dully. Akhmet, stumbling and falling, hurried after him, his legs trembling.
At the rock where he had previously found his grandson, General Semyonov was lying on his back. Blood from the throat torn by sharp teeth was caked on the face and chest. Not far from him lay a completely naked bearded man with his chest torn apart by buckshot.
On his bearded face, next to a crescent-shaped mole, a single tear froze like a drop of dew...
Kanwella epsar (Chechen) - the officer has aged.

Despite summer month, weather in last days I was not happy at all. From the very morning the sky was clouded with gray clouds, which poured cold, somehow joyless rain onto the ground. As if on purpose, I forgot my umbrella at home and, having gotten wet to the skin, was no longer in a hurry to hide from the cold streams, but walked resignedly along the pavement, indifferently examining the glass windows.
The mood matched the weather. A few months ago, like a grain of sand during a storm, I was caught by the wind of immigration and dropped in beautiful, rich, but terribly distant and alien Germany. Suddenly, problems arose that I had not even suspected: everyday troubles, a language barrier, a vacuum of communication. And the worst thing: I felt superfluous at this celebration of life. The phone didn’t ring, I didn’t have to rush anywhere, no one was waiting for me or looking for a meeting with me.
Rare passers-by cast indifferent glances in my direction and silently hurried about their business. I was a stranger here. My heart was sad. It was a shame to realize that I was useless at forty years old.
Immersed in my joyless thoughts, I completely did not notice anything around me, and when I suddenly looked up, it was as if something had pushed me in the chest. It seemed to me that a ray of sunlight was hitting my face from behind the glass. I came closer. Through the glass one could see a small room filled with easels and canvases.
On the wall, next to the window, there was a completed painting, which made me stop. It depicted some kind of dilapidated rural church, reflected in the river flowing past. The sun slowly rolled out from behind the church domes, illuminating the ground, strewn with fading leaves, with some unearthly light. It seemed that in just one more moment the twilight would melt, the rain would stop and my soul would feel lighter. I covered my face with my hand: an inexorable memory carried me into the recent past.
...In the winter of 2000, Russian troops entered Grozny. The staff officers took into account the experience of the first
Chechen war, when in two days of New Year 1995 there were almost completely
The 131st Maykop brigade, the 81st Samara motorized rifle regiment, and a significant part of the 8th Volgograd Corps, which went to the aid of the dying Russian battalions, were destroyed.
Preparations for the assault on the rebellious Chechen capital were carried out seriously and lasted several months. All this time, day and night, aircraft hovered over the burned city. federal forces. The rockets and shells did their job - the city practically ceased to exist. All high-rise buildings were destroyed, wooden buildings were burned, and dead houses silently looked at people with empty window sockets.
At the same time, people continued to live under the rubble. These were residents of Grozny, mostly old people, women, children, who had lost loved ones, housing, property during the war years and did not want to leave the city, because NOBODY WAS NEEDED THEM IN RUSSIA.
The defense of the city was entrusted to Shamil Basayev and his “Abkhaz” battalion. Federal troops were supposed to surround the city and destroy all the militants, but Basayev outwitted Russian generals, and in last night Before the assault, he took some of his fighters to the mountains.
The other part, disguised as civilians, settled in the city and nearby villages.
In early February, intelligence reported that the “Czechs” were on the eve of another anniversary
The deportations of 1944 are preparing a series of terrorist attacks for February 23. Suddenly there were many young men in the city.
Group command Russian troops ordered to strengthen the garrison of Grozny
combined squads consisting of fighters commandant companies, OMON and SOBR.
That's how I ended up in Grozny. By that time my contract was already coming to an end, and I really hoped that I would stay alive and return home.
Despite the cheerful assurances of politicians that the war in Chechnya was about to end, in Grozny snipers were still being shot from under the rubble, people and cars were being blown up by landmines. Our task was simple: accompany the columns, protect buildings and institutions. If the need arises to take part in sweeps.
On that February day, the sun was shining in the morning. The fallen snow lightly dusted the piles of broken bricks and pieces of rusty tin with which the ground was strewn. They say that during the last war, local residents covered the bodies of dead soldiers with these pieces to prevent rats and dogs from devouring them.
Soldiers free from duty sleep side by side on plank bunks. Petty Officer Igor Perepelitsin sits at a hot stove and cleans his machine gun. Igor was born in Grozny, served in the police here, and rose to the rank of officer. Then, when Russians began to be killed in Chechnya, he left for Russia, but there was no place for him in the “authorities.” Then, along with the Cossacks, Perepelitsin went to fight in Yugoslavia, then in Transnistria. Well, when the mess began in Chechnya, he was right here. His police rank doesn’t count here, and Igor pulls the soldier’s strap with us. He knows everything about Chechnya and the Chechens.
- Igorek, have you met Basayev?
- Well, Shamil is a dark horse, he studied in Moscow, they say that even White House defended during the putsch. I know one thing: before he appeared in Abkhazia, his battalion was trained at a training base of either the KGB or the GRU. They trained him especially for Chechnya, you know?
The sergeant-major clicks the shutter and pulls the trigger.
But I knew Ruslan Lobazanov, Lobzik, a former athlete personally, at one school
studied. He was a strong man, strong-willed, although he was a complete scumbag. best friend childhood, Isa Kopeyka was burned along with his car on his orders. He also played some tricks with the committee. After his guard shot him, his committee ID was found in his pocket.
Igor spits on the floor:
- Take my word for it, they are all tied here with the same rope. I'm only fighting because
I can’t stop, war is like a drug, it’s addictive.
- Well, when this mess is over, what are you going to do?
- I’ll go to Moscow. I’ll gather some desperate guys and rush to the Kremlin. Then the whole country will breathe a sigh of relief.
They didn’t let us come to an agreement. A SOBR officer comes running and shouts:
- Guys! Rise! The Czechs fired at the market with a grenade launcher.
We're going out to clean up. The people in the market immediately fled. Several dead soldiers, in bloody, dirty peacoats, and several civilians lie on the dirty snow. Women are already howling above them. We are blocking the streets leading to the market with armored personnel carriers, commanded by a major from the SOBR. We go down to the basement, riot police are with us, Igor Perepelitsyn insures the entrance. People live in the basement - Russian old people, children. A frightened flock of them presses against the wall. A girl of about 15-16 years old remains sitting on the bed in the middle of the basement, staring with frightened eyes and hiding something under the pillow. The riot policeman points a machine gun at her:
- Do you, beauty, need a special invitation or are your legs paralyzed from fear?
The girl suddenly throws back the blanket defiantly.
– Just imagine, they’ve been taken away!
Instead of legs, she has stumps sticking out. Some old man shouts:
- Dear ones, we’re our own people, we’ve been hanging around here for years. Vera is an orphan from the last war, and even her legs were blown off by a bomb.
I go over and carefully cover her legs with a gray soldier’s blanket and take out a hidden package from under the pillow. I'm a mine clearance specialist, but this doesn't look like a landmine. It turned out to be paints, ordinary watercolor paints. The girl looks from under her brows:
-If you want to take it, I won’t give it back.
The riot policeman sighs like a peasant:
- The Lord is with you, daughter. We are people too.
In the evening we return to base. Several shells were found. There is a lot of this goodness here. Several Chechen men were detained. Igor knows one of them. He asks something in Chechen. He doesn't answer. The foreman explains:
- This is Shirvani Askhabov. Their six brothers are all fighters. Three died from bombings in the city, the rest fled to the mountains.
The detainees were taken to a temporary regional police station. Igor spent a long time explaining something to the duty officer. The next day I begged the foreman for two dry rations. For a box of chocolates I took bandages and medicine from the medical unit. I came to yesterday's basement. Nobody was surprised by my arrival. People were minding their own business. The girl was drawing while sitting on the bed. An old church looked at me from a white sheet of paper, its reflection in the autumn water. I pushed my duffel bag under the bed and sat down on its edge.
- How are you, artist?
The girl smiled with bloodless lips:
- Good or almost good. It's just that my legs hurt. Just imagine, they are no longer there, but they hurt.
We sat for two hours. The girl drew and talked about herself. The story is the most ordinary, and this makes it seem even scarier. Mother is Chechen, father is German, Rudolf Kern. Before the war, they taught at the Grozny Oil Institute and were planning to leave for Russia, but didn’t have time. My father worked as a driver and one evening did not return home. Someone coveted his old Zhiguli. At that time, unidentified corpses were often found in the city. After learning about the death of her father, her mother fell ill. She did not get out of bed and, once returning home, the girl found neither an apartment nor a mother. The city was bombed by Russian planes almost every day, and instead of a house there were only ruins.
And then Vera stepped on a mine that someone had forgotten. It’s good that people took her to the hospital in time, where the militants were operated on. Mina is Russian, but the Chechens saved her life.
We are silent for a long time. I smoke, then I ask if she has any relatives in Russia. She replies that her father’s brother lives in Nalchik, but it seems he has been planning to leave for Germany for a long time. I say goodbye and get ready to leave. The girl hands me the drawing and says:
- I want to paint such a picture that, looking at it, every person believes in himself, that everything will be fine for him. A person cannot live without faith.
The girl looks at me with her big eyes, and it seems to me that she knows much more about life than I do.
I was going to visit Vera the next day, but in war you can’t make any guesses. Our armored personnel carrier was blown up by a landmine. The driver and gunner were killed, and Perepelitsyn and I escaped with a shell shock and several shrapnel. From the Budenovsky hospital I called NTV correspondent Olga Kiriy and told her a story about a girl who lost her legs in the war. Olga agreed to help find her relatives and launched this story into the next report. Then she sent a letter in which she said that Vera was taken from Grozny by her uncle...
I'm standing in front of a dark shop window and trying to see the signature on the painting. Faith?..
How much do I need you now, VERA?

The convoy walked through a dead, deserted city. The gray, smoky walls of the houses saw her off with the empty eye sockets of scorched windows broken by explosions. The slushy Caucasian winter mourned the dead and still living people with drops of incessant rain. The stains of fuel oil, mixed with rain and snow, shimmered in the dim sun with all the colors of the rainbow, winking at passing cars with sudden ripples from the rushing wind. It was cold and scary. In front and behind the column walked two gray-green tanks, cutting up the remaining patches of asphalt with black dirty tracks.
The soldiers sat in a truck covered with a gray tarpaulin, huddled closely together with wet, dirty peacoats, and clutching their machine guns between their knees. Many were dozing. In the damp and echoing silence of the morning, the roar of engines could be heard, and somewhere in the distance a mortar was rumbling non-stop.
The street leading to the Belikovsky Bridge was littered with brick debris, building blocks, and twisted and battered sheets of rusty tin. The lead vehicle, growling and emitting wisps of gray smoke, carefully made its way between the rubble.
The barrels of machine guns rummaged non-stop along the deserted streets, dead houses, scorched trees, suspiciously lingering his gaze on the scraps of rags rolled by the wind.
Ensign Savushkin, having moved to the driver's seat, pressed his forehead against the rubber of the viewing slot, peering intently into the gray morning. A blue vein throbbed on his temple, and beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks. Suddenly, in the crosshairs of the machine gun, the pipe of a grenade launcher flashed, looking out from the basement of a destroyed second-hand store. The mouth of the pipe moved smoothly following the column. “Aaaaaaaaah!” shouted the shooter, pressing the electric trigger of the machine guns. There was a sharp and bitter smell of burnt gunpowder, and shell casings began to fall. The shooter saw the bullets tear out pieces of brick from the wall, and that was the last thing he saw in his life. The lead and trailing tanks began to rise, as if they had grown wings. Almost simultaneously with this, the sounds of explosions were heard. The armored personnel carrier following the front tank, trying to dodge the wall of fire that suddenly grew in front of it, buried its nose in the crumpled trees. The door and window openings, which had not previously shown signs of life, bristled with fire. Shots from grenade launchers and machine gun fire tore the tin and armor of vehicles, shredded human bodies. The maddened truck roared and, flapping its broken ramps, slowly crawled towards the Belikovsky store. The torn awning was burning, the surviving soldiers shot through the tarpaulin, jumped and fell onto the burning asphalt, immediately falling under lead streams. Dirty green, oily peacoats burst into flames, the soldiers screamed in pain, rolling in the gray mud and trying to put out the flames. The green Ural, driven by the dead driver, burst into flames and slowly toppled onto its side. “Alla Akbar!” was heard through the machine gun fire.
“Mom,” cried the soldier with close-cropped hair, crawling on his stomach and dragging his broken legs behind him. Illuminated by the flames of burning vehicles, Russian soldiers fell under dagger fire, snarling back fire less and less. There was a resounding silence, broken only by the groans of wounded and burned people, and the crackle of hot, twisted metal. The militants emerging from behind the shelters reloaded their weapons and immediately finished off the wounded, shooting at the boys’ shorn heads. There was a smell of fresh blood and burnt human flesh in the damp air.
“Mom,” the Russian boy in the soldier’s pea coat continues to whisper, “Mom, save me!” A bearded, sullen man picked up an abandoned machine gun, tilted his head back with the toe of his boot, and shot him in the bloody face. He cursed when he saw the blood on his boot and wiped it with disgust on the collar of the soldier’s pea coat.
Ensign Savushkin, hanging waist-deep from the hatch, hung on the armor. Aluminum
an Orthodox cross and a soldier's badge with a number stamped on it hung from his neck. Blood flowed down his chest, neck, slowly dripping onto the crucified body of Christ.
All night long rats squeaked and dog shadows flashed in this place. The animals were not afraid and did not interfere with each other - this city had long belonged to them. The corpses of the killed soldiers lay for several days. At night, city residents crawled out of their basements and covered the gnawed bodies with pieces of tin and slate. A week later, Chechnya and Russia declared a truce.

CHECHEN NOVEL

The commandant's company stood in the village for the third month. Contract soldiers guarded the school, kindergarten, administrative buildings. They went out to destroy mini-oil refineries and escorted convoys of cargo and humanitarian aid throughout Chechnya. During the day it was quiet in the village, at night snipers were shooting, signal mines were exploding, and the military registration and enlistment office and school were fired at several times from a grenade launcher. Roman Belov returned to the company from the hospital. Having lain in a hospital bed with pneumonia and having grown quite thin on meager hospital rations, Belov was eager to join the company as if he were going home. A former history teacher, tired of the constant lack of money, he signed a contract and went to war to earn at least a little living. Many friends went into business, some into bandits. Many, like him, eked out a miserable existence, borrowing and re-borrowing money from more fortunate neighbors, friends, and relatives.
In the war, of course, people were killed, military columns were ambushed, people were blown up by mines, but everyone drove these thoughts away from themselves. Today he is alive and well.
Having reported his arrival to the company commander and received his machine gun, Belov headed to the military registration and enlistment office. His platoon was located there, occupying the first floor. Over the past month, the contingent has changed a lot, someone was kicked out, someone was sent to the hospital, someone voluntarily broke their contract. Over the past time, the soldiers have improved their way of life; they no longer slept on the floor, but on beds. The sleeping quarters were warm from homemade heaters; food was prepared not in the soldiers’ field kitchens, but in a small room right there in the military registration and enlistment office.
Served food tall woman about thirty, in a long black dress and the same scarf. Roman drew attention to her beautiful fingers; she did not look like an ordinary resident of the village. Thanking her for the food, Roman tried to help her put away the dishes and heard in response:
- No, no, you don’t have to do this! A woman must feed a man and clean up his dishes.
Belov was embarrassed and seemed to blush:
- But you waited for me to eat and didn’t go home.
The woman smiled slightly:
- Waiting for a man is also a woman’s duty and destiny.
Her voice was like the rustling of autumn leaves, it captivated and attracted, just as the sight of running water or a burning fire attracts the eye. An unfamiliar soldier entered, fastening his machine gun, and said:
- Let's go, Aishat, today I will be your gentleman.
They left, and Belov retained her voice, thin pale face, and long eyelashes in his memory for a long time. In the sleeping quarters, the neighbor down the aisle took out a flask of vodka from his bedside table:
- Give me fifty grams for an acquaintance. Vodka in war - the best remedy from stress. Vodka and work - the best cure for all this vomit has not yet been invented.
After drinking, the neighbor, who introduced himself as Nikolai, himself began to talk about Aishat, as if he guessed that Roman was hanging on every word about her:
- Chechen, refugee from Grozny. Pianist, have you seen what kind of fingers she has? The whole family: mother, child died, covered with bricks during the bombing. The militants took my husband away. So I was left alone - no home, no family. As they say, no homeland, no flag. - He crunched a pickled cucumber. - After I escaped from Grozny, I came here to visit my relatives. The deputy commissioner - he is also a “Czech”, though only half - assigned her to us. Everything is working, there is no salary, and there is always food. In this situation this is also important.
Roman lit a cigarette and listened carefully.
- She’s not a bad woman. Our guys tried to approach her, but she quickly turned away from the gate to everyone. The special officers also checked her, but fell behind. Not every man will be able to survive this, in general, you will see everything for yourself.
Roman thought that Nikolai would pour a second, he even came up with a reason to refuse, but Nikolai swept the flask off the table and put it in the nightstand:
- Well, bro, that's enough for today. Everything is good in moderation, with the next glass the violation of the oath and military duty begins.
Since morning, the military commissar has been wandering around the area. Belov and two machine gunners accompanied him. By evening, their legs were buzzing, and they were late for dinner. However, Aishat had not left yet; there was a saucepan with hot porridge wrapped in a blanket on the table, and a frying pan with meat on the stove. Belov joked:
- Well, Aishat, today you have three men.
The wings of her nose twitched when he said her name, and she replied:
- In every woman’s life there is only one man, all the others are only similar or dissimilar to him.
They carried on their conversation, understandable only to the two of them. Tired soldiers They finished the porridge without paying attention to them. Nikolai came in with a machine gun, but Roman stood up to meet him:
- I’ll see Aishat off, you rest.
Nikolai advised:
- Don’t stay long, curfew is in half an hour. Don’t walk through courtyards and take a couple of grenades with you just in case.
They walked along the deserted streets of the village, street lamps flickered here and there, and the ice of frozen puddles crunched under their feet. They were silent. Roman caught himself thinking that he wanted to cuddle up to this woman. She asked:
- Why did you go to accompany me, because today is not your turn?
He knew what she would ask him, most women always ask the same question. He answered quite unexpectedly:
- Probably, I wanted to go back to the past. I saw off my first girlfriend in the same way in the winter. Only this was not in Chechnya, but in Russia. Snow crunched under our feet, and the same snow fell from the chimneys.
leisurely smoke. It was twenty years ago, and I had a feeling that happiness was ahead of me. I still remember how I wanted to kiss my girlfriend. It’s strange, I forgot what her name was, but I remember what her lips smelled like.
Aishat shrugged her shoulders:
-You are not like other soldiers. What brought you here?
He answered sincerely:
I probably don’t know myself. I used to think about making money, but now I realized that I don’t need this money. It is impossible to accumulate wealth by seeing others suffer. Besides, money is needed only in the world where the lights of big cities are, where self-respecting men drive luxury cars and give their women flowers, gold, and fur coats. You just don't want to fall behind everyone else. Everything is different here. When you don’t know whether you will live to see tomorrow, thoughts about the eternal come to you, and you begin to appreciate every breath of air, sip of water, the joy of human communication.
He nevertheless took her by the arm, holding her so that she wouldn’t slip.
- I'm - former teacher, I’m used to explaining everything to children. Now I need to explain everything to myself. First of all, why do I live in the world?
They approached a small adobe house with dark windows. Leaving Aishat on the street, Belov entered the yard and made sure that there was no danger. Then he called her to follow him. Aishat opened the door with the key and warming her frozen palms with her breath, said:
“You have to go, you only have ten minutes left,” she paused and added. - Thank you for tonight, I never thought that I would ever feel so good.
The next day, he looked at his watch non-stop, afraid he wouldn’t make it to his company before curfew. Somehow it just so happened that he alone began to accompany Aishat home; it became his duty and privilege. If Aishat was released earlier, and he was away somewhere, she would wait patiently for him, reading in the kitchen. Or she looked thoughtfully out the window, wrapping her shoulders in a black scarf out of habit. They did not advertise or hide their relationship. Everyone thought they were having an affair, but they didn't think about it. They felt good together. Adults, they did not rush things, knowing that if something is easy to get, it is easily forgotten. Or maybe, having been burned in their previous life, having lost loved ones in one way or another, they were afraid to believe that happiness could be found so routinely and by chance. Well, just like going out to a bakery for a minute and finding a bar of gold on the road...
Federal troops were waiting for the order to attack Grozny. There was a constant cloud of smoke from the fires over the city. Columns walked along the roads every day military equipment. The militants intensified the mine-sabotage war, every day land mines exploded on the roads, every day they fired at and burned columns, killed officers, policemen and employees of the Chechen administration. Near Nozhai-Yurt, an EMERCOM convoy carrying humanitarian aid was shot and burned. The column was accompanied by two armored personnel carriers of riot police and a BRDM with contract soldiers. The head of intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel Smirnov, went to the scene of the tragedy. Belov, with the intelligence department, was ordered to accompany him. For two weeks in a row they shuttled between Nozhai-Yurt and the group’s headquarters in Khankala. Roman counted the days when he would see Aishat.
Returning to the commandant’s office, he saw that instead of Aishat, another woman was busy in the kitchen. She answered his question:
- Aishat got sick, she has pneumonia. He's at home.
Not finding the company commander, Roman went up to the second floor to Major Arzhanov and asked permission to leave for the village. The major, already aware of the relationship between his relative and Belov, just waved his hand. Grabbing a machine gun, Roman dropped into the market, then almost ran to the familiar adobe house.
Aishat, wrapped in a scarf, was lying on the sofa. Seeing Roman, she became embarrassed and tried to get up. Almost forcing her onto the pillows, he began unloading food and fruit. For the first time in the entire time they met, they switched to you. Belov fed her tea from a spoon and kissed her chapped lips. She said:
- I always thought that the most pleasant thing in the world is to look after your man, and I never thought that it was so pleasant when your beloved man looks after you. Quenching the jealousy in his soul, Roman asked:
- Who is your favorite man?
She laughed and, kissing him on the lips, answered:
- Stupid, well, of course you are. Everyone else I've known or know is just like you.
In the evening Nikolai came to them, refused tea, and warned:
“We will resolve the issue with the authorities, but in the morning after curfew tea, be in the company.” You understand, work is work. And the guys will be worried. Don’t relax here, keep the machine gun at hand and always have a cartridge in the barrel. - Stomping his boots and coughing into his fist, he left.
It was already getting dark. They lit the stove and sat by the open firebox without turning on the light. The flames licked the logs, the fiery glare reflected on their faces. Roman stirred the coals with a poker. They crackled, throwing burning sparks from the firebox. Aishat did most of the talking, Roman just listened:
- When this war began, I didn’t think it would be so scary. I was never interested in politics, I didn’t go to demonstrations or read newspapers. I was all about music and my family. I didn’t care who Dudayev, Zavgaev or anyone else would be president.
Aishat removed his hand from her shoulder, at the same time pressing her cheek against his palm, and began to collect it on the table:
- I studied in Moscow for five years, at the conservatory, and never divided people by nationality. Therefore, when they began to expel Russians from Chechnya, take away their houses and apartments, and in Russia at that time they told you straight to your face that you were a black-ass, and the police checked your passport, just because you were from the Caucasus, I became scared. Then on our streets, right in broad daylight, people began to be killed, killed just like that, by the right of the strong, because you have a machine gun in your hands, but your victim does not. Chechens began to kill non-Chechens. Our neighbors Dolinsky were killed only because they had a nice, large apartment, which they did not want to sell for next to nothing. My husband Ramzan was taken away from home that same night, and I still don’t even know who? People say that Labazan's bandits are bandits, but maybe that's not true. I can’t understand one thing, where did we get so many scum? I only know one thing. Ramadan is no longer
in the world, otherwise he would definitely find me.
She pressed her face to him:
-Are you tired of listening to me yet, honey? Maybe I shouldn’t have told you this, but I’ve been waiting for you for so many years, I knew that you would still come to me and I’d tell you about everything I’ve lived through these years.
She took a short breath, coughed, and guiltily pressed her hands to her chest:
- Let's put the table closer to the stove, and then we will have dinner by the fire, like primitive people. So, I won’t say that I loved Ramazan very much, but he was my man. I was devoted and faithful to him, well, probably, like a dog. You know, for a Vainakh woman, her man is the Universe. Then these terrible bombings and shelling of residential areas began. I went to get food, and when I returned home, neither my mother nor my daughter were there. I wanted to die, I thought I would go crazy. This went on for several years, then I met you. I don’t know what happened to me, but when I saw you, I had a feeling that it was you that I had been waiting for all my life. I don’t care at all how you lived all this time, and who was with you all these years. The only thing that matters to me is that you are next to me now.
They were already lying in bed, and she kept telling and telling. Roman stroked her body with his palms, kissed her trembling eyelashes, neck, chest, warming her with his breath. Then she warmly leaned towards him, giving all her unspent love, all the tenderness of her body. Every evening Roman hurried to the company to see Aishat, to be with her for at least half an hour. He was already seriously considering terminating the contract, taking Aishat and leaving with her to Russia, away from the war. Friday was Aishat's last day of work. She received the payment and in two days was supposed to go to Roman’s mother. She did not leave the military registration and enlistment office; out of established habit, she waited for him to return from security. Everyone already knew that she was leaving, that Roman was serving his last month and was also leaving after Aishat. Belov was given three days of leave so that he could spend the last days with Aishat before breaking up. He arrived, as always, half an hour before curfew. According to established habit, he put a grenade in the pocket of his pea coat. Happy and joyful, we went home. The military commissar looked after them through the window. Life is a strange thing, someone dies in the war, someone comes to life.
Leaving Aishat outside the gates of the house, Roman entered the yard and walked around the house on all sides. Strange, but a feeling of anxiety was born in my soul, familiar to all people who often come into contact with danger. He examined the door lock. Roman could have sworn that Aishat hung him a little differently in the morning. Without saying a word, Belov took out a grenade, opened the lock, then, pressing the pin, pulled out the ring and stepped over the threshold. He immediately realized that he was not mistaken, there was someone in the room. At the same time as he realized this, he heard the sharp pop of a pistol shot and felt a sharp, tearing pain in his stomach. Just ready to unclench his fingers and roll the grenade under the shooter’s feet, he heard a shout behind him:
- Roma, Roma, my beloved!.. Falling backwards, he lay down with his chest on the hand with the grenade, not allowing his fingers to unclench and let go of death from his hand. The man sitting by the window did not move, lowering his pistol, he looked at Roman with interest. Aishat ran into the room and fell on him, covering him with her body. Following her, a man in a leather jacket entered, with a machine gun in his hands. Picking up the machine gun Belov had dropped, he said:
- Ramzan, you should finish your business quickly, you need to leave.
He boiled and said in a sharp, guttural voice:
- Come on, shut your mouth and stand where I put you!
At the sound of his voice, Aishat raised her head and met the eyes of the grinning man they called Ramzan.
“You-s-s?” she breathed.
“Yes, it’s me,” he agreed briefly. - Get ready, you are leaving with me.
“No,” Aishat answered. -You can kill me with him, but I will not leave him.
“You!” Ramzan boiled. - Stupid woman, you forgot everything! I forgot who your husband is! What did they do to your family! Why do you need this Russian guy?
- My husband died six years ago. Then I lost my family, and I will mourn it forever. This man replaced everything for me - both my husband and my child. Do you understand that I love him? I love you like I have never loved anyone before. Ramzan pointed a gun at her:
“I’m very sorry, but I’ll have to kill you.” You yourself said that a woman can only have one man.
- You don’t understand anything, Ramzan, my man is him. “You were just like him,” Aishat said in a tired voice, covering Roman with her body, warming him with her breath.
The door slammed, Ramzan left. Aishat spread out like a black bird on the lying man, forcing his heart to beat in the same rhythm as hers, absorbing his pain into her body.
Soldiers ran down the street, jerking the bolts of their machine guns as they ran. Tired old women looked at them indifferently from the gaps of dark windows.

The truth about the exploits and everyday life of the Chechen war in the stories of its eyewitnesses and participants formed the content of this book, which is also published as a tribute to the memory of our soldiers, officers and generals who gave their lives for their friends and continue their military feat for the sake of our well-being

They say that paratroopers are the most uncompromising warriors. Maybe so. But the rules that they introduced in the mountains of Chechnya during the complete absence of hostilities are clearly worthy of special mention. The paratrooper unit, in which a group of reconnaissance officers was commanded by Captain Mikhail Zvantsev, was located in a large clearing in the mountains, a kilometer from the Chechen village of Alchi-Aul, Vedeno region.

These were rotten months of rotten negotiations with the “Czechs”. It’s just that in Moscow they didn’t understand very well that you couldn’t negotiate with bandits. This simply will not work, since each side is obliged to fulfill its obligations, and the Chechens did not bother themselves with such nonsense. They needed to pause the war to take a breath, bring up ammunition, recruit reinforcements...

One way or another, an obvious rampant of “peacekeeping” began by certain high-profile personalities who, without hesitation, took money from the Chechen field commanders for your work. As a result, the army men were forbidden not only to open fire first, but even to return fire with fire. They were even forbidden to enter mountain villages so as not to “provoke the local population.” Then the militants openly began to live with their relatives, and they told the “federals” to their faces that they would soon leave Chechnya.

Zvantsev’s unit had just been airlifted into the mountains. The camp, set up before them by the paratroopers of Colonel Anatoly Ivanov, was made hastily, the positions were not yet fortified, there were many places inside the fortress where it was undesirable to move openly - they were well under fire. Here it was necessary to dig 400 meters of good trenches and lay parapets.

Captain Zvantsev clearly did not like the equipment of the positions. But the regiment commander said that the paratroopers had only been here for a few days, so the engineers continued to equip the camp.

But there have been no losses so far these days! - said the regiment commander.

“They’re taking a closer look, don’t rush, Comrade Colonel. The time is not yet ripe,” Misha thought to himself.

The first “two hundredths” appeared a week later. And almost as always, the cause of this was sniper shots from the forest. Two soldiers who were returning to the tents from the mess hall were killed on the spot in the head and neck. In broad daylight.

The raid into the forest and the raid did not yield any results. The paratroopers reached the village, but did not enter it. This was contrary to orders from Moscow. We're back.

Then Colonel Ivanov invited the village elder to his place “for tea.” They drank tea for a long time in the headquarters tent.

So you say, father, there are no militants in your village?

No, there wasn't.

How is it, father, two of Basayev’s assistants come from your village. And he himself was a frequent guest. They say he wooed one of your girls...

People are telling lies... - The 90-year-old man in an astrakhan hat was unperturbed. Not a single muscle on his face moved.

Pour some more tea, son,” he turned to the orderly. His eyes, black as coals, glared at the card on the table, which had been prudently turned upside down with the little secret card.

“We don’t have militants in our village,” the old man said again. - Come visit us, Colonel. - The old man smiled a little. Unnoticeably so.

But the colonel understood this mockery. If you don’t go on a visit alone, they’ll cut off your head and throw you on the road. But with soldiers “on armor” you can’t, it’s contrary to orders.

“They’re besieging us from all sides. They’re beating us, but we can’t even conduct a raid in the village, huh? In a word, it’s the spring of ’96.” - The colonel thought bitterly.

We will definitely come, venerable Aslanbek...

Zvantsev came to see the colonel immediately after the Chechen left.

Comrade Colonel, let me train the “Czechs” like a paratrooper?

How is this, Zvantsev?

You'll see, everything is within the law. We have a very persuasive upbringing. Not a single peacemaker will find fault.

Well, come on, just so that my head doesn’t fall off later at army headquarters.

Eight people from Zvantsev’s unit quietly went out at night towards the ill-fated village. Not a single shot was fired until the morning, when the dusty and tired guys returned to the tent. The tankers were even surprised. Scouts walk around the camp with cheerful eyes and mysterious grins in their beards.

Already in the middle of the next day, the elder came to the gates of the Russian military camp. The guards made him wait for about an hour - for education - and then took him to the headquarters tent to the colonel.

Colonel Ivanov offered the old man tea. He refused with a gesture.

“Your people are to blame,” the elder began, forgetting his Russian speech out of excitement. - They mined the roads from the village. I will complain to Moscow!

The colonel called the intelligence chief.

The elder claims that it was we who set up the tripwires around the village... - and handed Zvantsev the wire guard from the tripwire.

Zvantsev twirled the wire in his hands in surprise.

Comrade Colonel, this is not our wire. We give out steel wire, but this is a simple copper wire. The militants staged it, no less...

What an action movie! “Do they really need this,” the old man shouted loudly in indignation and immediately stopped short, realizing that he had been stupid.

No, dear elder, we do not set up targets against civilians. We have come to free you from the militants. This is all the work of bandits.

Colonel Ivanov spoke with a slight smile and complicity on his face. The old man left, somewhat defeated and quiet, but furious and annoyed inside.

Are you letting me down under the article? - The Colonel made an indignant face.

No way, Comrade Colonel. This system is already debugged and has not caused any failures yet. The wire is really Chechen...

Chechen snipers did not shoot at the camp for a whole week. But on the eighth day, a soldier from the kitchen squad was shot in the head.

That same night, Zvantsev’s people again left the camp at night. As expected, the elder came to the authorities:

Well, why put tripwires against peaceful people? You must understand that our tape is one of the smallest, there is no one to help us.

The old man tried to find understanding in the colonel's eyes. Zvantsev sat with a stony face, stirring sugar in a glass of tea.

We will proceed as follows. In connection with such actions of bandits, a unit of Captain Zvantsev will go to the village. We will clear the mines for you. And to help him I give ten armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles. Just in case. So, father, you will go home on armor, and not on foot. We'll give you a ride!

Zvantsev entered the village, his people quickly cleared the “non-deployed” trip wires. True, they did this only after intelligence had worked in the village. It became clear that a path led from above, from the mountains, to the houses of the villagers. The residents clearly kept more livestock than they themselves needed. We also found a barn where beef was dried for future use.

A week later, an ambush left on the trail in a short battle destroyed seventeen bandits at once. They descended into the village without even sending forward reconnaissance. The village residents buried five in their teip cemetery.

A week later, another fighter in the camp was killed by a sniper bullet. The colonel, calling Zvantsev, told him briefly: “Go!”

And again the old man came to the colonel.

Another person died, it was a stretch.

Dear friend, our man also died. Your sniper took it.

Why ours. Where is ours from? - the old man became worried.

Yours, yours, we know. There is not a single source for twenty kilometers around here. So it's up to you. Only, old man, you understand that I cannot demolish your village to the ground with artillery, although I know that almost all of you there are Wahhabis. Your snipers kill my people, and when mine surround them, they throw down their machine guns and take out a Russian passport. From this moment on, they can no longer be killed.

The old man did not look the colonel in the eyes; he lowered his head and clutched his hat in his hands. There was a painful pause. Then, with difficulty pronouncing the words, the elder said:

You're right, Colonel. The militants will leave the village today. Only the newcomers remained. We're tired of feeding them...

They will leave like that. There will be no stretch marks, Aslanbek. And when they return, they will appear,” Zvantsev said.

The old man stood up silently, nodded to the colonel and left the tent. The colonel and captain sat down to drink tea.

“It turns out that it is possible to do something in this seemingly hopeless situation. I can’t anymore, I’m sending two hundred after two hundred,” the colonel thought to himself. “Well done captain! What can you do? In war it’s like in war!”

Alexey Borzenko

News