If your house means a thing to you
Where you first dreamed your Russian dreams...

Konstantin Simonov, July 1942, the Stalingrad Front

Stalingrad 2013. Alien Invasion

Study of undermeaning in Fyodor Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’.

• I express my thanks to my friends from Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Velikiy Novgorod for their help and assistance in collecting and preparing materials for this study (you may call it the way it used to be – film criticism of or a review given to Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’).
• Special acknowledgement: Nicholay and Antonina Bessonov, Vladimir Bogolayev for valuable materials, Dmitriy Gratskov for the web-design, Ivan Makachev for creating slide films, Alexander Shcherbina for his film review.
• I also want to express my profound gratitude to Pavel Vladimirovich Sorokin, Professor, Doctor of Science (Physics and Mathematics) who took part in Higgs boson discovery at CERN, and my dear uncle Pasha for his scientific advice.
• I kowtow to my mother and uncle Pasha for their memories of their life in Voronezh, Otrozhky, Balashov and Stalingrad in the war years.
• I also thank all concerned bloggers who felt filled with indignation at Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ and whose reviews and criticism have enriched this study.

• Introduction
• Part ‘Zero’. Dark world in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’
• Part 1. Dirty myths in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’
• Part 2. Other values in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’
• Part 3. Jeering at the army and the people in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’
• Part 4. Paralipsis in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• References

Introduction. About a turn of civilization and the Russianness

Do you remember what Malchish-Kibalchish said when he sensed trouble: ‘Everything seems to be good, but something is not good’? If one of the young does not know the story, it's ‘Tale of a military secret, Malchish-Kibalchish and his firm promise’. The same thing happens again: after watching Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ the descendants of the winners of that terrible war understand there are Russians speaking Russian on the screen, they wear the Red Army uniform but something is not good and they are not ours, really. The Fritzes also speak German, wear Hitler's uniform, but there is something wrong with them too, they are not the fascists, really. The first reaction is just to scold and swear at the filmmakers, and that’s exactly what many do, but the producer Alexander Rodnyanskiy and director Fyodor Bondarchuk laugh because they have already received their ‘barrel of jam and the whole basket of cookies’, like Malchish-Plokhish did for his bad deed. They have already lit a fuse and it is to explode soon. Do you think it is a joke? Read F. Bondarchuk’s statement: ‘...there will follow such large-scale and sweeping change of the world order that domestic problems will be forgotten. Russia will be involved in a giant turn of civilization’. So let's try to understand, before it’s too late, what these ‘Malchish- Plokhish’ bad boys want to undermine using ‘the turn of civilization’ as a cover.

It is our Great Victory that they want to undermine, and so will they Mother Russia later. You can read in Alex Shiropaev’s blog – he is one of the shot-firers - how openly and cynically he discusses the cult of ‘victory’ (he uses small letters in order to humiliate our sacred things):

• Nowadays ‘the great victory‘ is the last myth justifying and legitimizing the existence of the Russian historical statehood; it’s the myth bounding nations and regions within the frame of an obsolete and outdated empire. The ‘great victory’ is the last thing that helps Russia exist as a country. If you remove this ‘cult’, the nations and regions will look at each other with surprise and begin to build new relationships, form new world because the question ‘What binds us together?‘ will cause quite different answers. Then there will open up a possibility of a new ethno-regional identity such as the Don and Kuban Cossacks, for example, whose ancestors were often committed to anti-Soviet positions during the Second World War... Removing the cult of ‘victory’ has undoubtedly progressive significance because it is the key to establishing a new Russianness, a different one, alien.

The other Russianness which A. Shiropaev calls for, is, in fact, a great turn of civilization mentioned by Bondarchuk; it signifies elimination of our socio-cultural core and removal of such value like ‘integrity of Russia’ from it, in particular. A. Shiropaev writes it clearly: Don, Kuban. And there are some other shot-firers and separatists who go on ‘working out’ the same topic: S. Belkovskiy writes about the Caucasus, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan; E. Albats and ‘Echo of Moscow’ about Siberia and the Far East; Professor S. Medvedev from HSE about Arctic, etc. They discuss separatism and struggle against it over there. The separatists keep on trying to persuade us that after the division of the country and becoming small we will be able to live like Switzerland. I wonder why the West should allow us to live this way. Whose expense will they live at then? Who will pay their bills then? Who will have a desire to share wealth with the small ones? Our life will bear a faint resemblance with Bulgaria’s at best, and we are most likely to live according to a mixed scenario of war like it is in Syria and of hunger like in East Africa, instead (only unlike them we’ll be in the snow rather than in the sands). The way hunger was deliberately and artificially triggered in Africa, is described here, hence it can be implemented for any small country again. There is also economic justification of being big and strong; for example, the chief editor of ‘The Economist’ magazine, Professor of Moscow State University, Doctor of Economics S.S. Gubanov proves that..

Our natural Russianness confronts the other one, alien. It is necessary to explain that we understand the Russianness as the merger, joining of two sources – nature and spirit (we can correlate it with the body and soul of the Russian people as a Congregational Identity); our conception is based on the lines written by K. Simonov in the epigraph. A Russian by the nature is anyone of our countrymen who is called Russian abroad, no matter whether he considers himself a Russian or a Tatar, a Ukrainian or a Belorussian, or belongs to the Caucasian or Central Asian peoples, or any other large and small nations of our great sovereign Empire-symphony (which unites us with help of equity and is united on basis of love). We all come from the same family of Mother Russia and the same home, which is our Homeland, the country on the continent of Eurasia. ‘If your house means a thing to you...’ - think over these lines... A Russian in spirit is anyone of our like-minded persons who loves Mother Russia and our Homeland, no matter whether he is red or white, atheist or believer, liberal or conservative, Westerner or Eurasian, monarchist or democrat. ‘...Where you first dreamed your Russian dreams‘ – it is the Home where Russian spirit nourishes the soul of other nations... The Russians are a family of nations living in one house-Homeland in accordance with a principle - ‘one for all and all for one.’ All our nations are brothers and sisters of the state-building Russian people. We may only guess what kind of spirit the invading Russianness will have, but we think they will be embarrassed to speak Russian and ashamed of being called the Russians, especially when staying abroad. They may call themselves North-Europeans like Afro-Americans did and they will be a flock of orphaned nations living in the fenced houses in a colonial empire-filth (which enslaves people with power and rests on lies and selfishness) in accordance with the principle - ‘every man for himself.’

The other Russianness is said to have appeared due to undermining significance of the Great Victory first and subsequently Russia. Who is going to undermine it? These are the above-mentioned different Russians who will, since they are already among us. How will they undermine? It’ll be done by creating consciousness-poisoning myths about the Red Army the way it was done by Dr. Goebbels, one example of which, overcoming a nauseating feeling, we can demonstrate quoting notorious A. Sharopaev’s blog named ‘Tomb of the Unknown Rapist’:

• ‘The Red Army invasion in East Prussia, West Prussia… and Silesia was always accompanied everywhere with violence the new military history has never seen yet. Indiscriminate killings of war prisoners and civilians..., mass rape of women, even old ones and children…, arsons of houses, villages, urban neighborhoods and whole cities, systematic looting, pillaging... and finally, the mass deportation of men as well as women and youth into the Soviet Union as labour slaves; mothers were usually separated from their children and family ties were broken... The Red Army went on moving farther to the West... gradually turning into a hybrid of militant Asian hordes and a noisy gypsy camp...‘

Has your blood been at boiling heat with anger? If yes, you have a healthy immune system from the neo-Fascist virus. There is an advice for those whose blood the poisonous lies made curdle, and it is as follows: take an antidote in the form of documents and facts provided by Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences, E.S. Senyavskaya. I can add here one more story from a friend of mine from Hungary who outlived the war. Extremely influential forces of the West are engaged now in the creating and distributing lies about the Red Army, i.e. the psycho-historical war is going on. Here is an example of such strikes, which these forces make at our history: on July 3, 2009, Parliamentary Assembly of OSCE on Lithuania and Slovenia’s initiative adopted a resolution that dared equate the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. If someone needs to undermine the Great Victory, it is necessary first to persuade us that the Red Army acted in Europe like a wild beast horde of looters, rapists and murderers. How can it be instilled the most effective way? Film art is the best, undoubtedly! Here we are coming back to our main topic, Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’.

We are not trying to find out why the fuel reserves of the whole German army have been at the forefront. We do not want to discuss whether a projectile could ricochet from a tank turret and turn the corner. We will not wonder why the captain Kahn rode just a track bike on the square designed for landing operations and rugged terrain actions, though there were only 8 733 tracked motorcycles which went into service in the Wehrmacht but the wheeled ones numbered hundreds of thousands (source). It’s no good trying to figure out why it had been impossible to call down the fire of our artillery on the heads of the Germans before they took over the building. We will not make fun of the fact that taking up/defending the building was going on schedule: the day time was devoted to fighting and the night time to sleeping and making love. Many deliberate mistakes of the script as well as meaningless 3D effects and slo-mo (slowdown) are a sort of false front used to impose the false myths and different, alien values on us.

We turn to consider the essence of this film, which consists in the intrusion of an Alien who is a sort of monster, into the holy of holies within the socio-cultural center, i.e. into the core of the Russian soul. You may imagine this core of the soul as a fortress, and temples inside this fortress as a storage of our spiritual values. The Alien invades the fortress unlocking the gate with a key of ‘Stalingrad’, the name sacred to our souls. Next, he steals up under the guise of an attractive person to the holy places and under a veil of the fogged truth smuggles in these temples new meaning, which distorts our values. The temples of our souls begin to be reborn and there are no more domes on the tops but some disgusting trembling goo instead. This is the way the other Russianness appears and thus the turn of civilization is prepared. What kind of thing is this froth and what is this undermeaning that mutilates the temples of our souls? We are going to figure out the undermeaning of the film having a good look at the scenes in which ‘everything is good, but something is not good.’

Part ‘Zero’. Dark world in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’

• ‘The film discusses struggle between Good and Evil but you should not draw a random analogy and identify Good with the Red Army and Evil with the army of Nazis‘ – quoted from Bondarchuk’s TV interview on October 06, 2013.

About the scientific foundations of dark matter and its correlation with the other world (hidden text)

‘Epic‘ mythology of Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’

Let us now consider the main actors of the ‘epic‘ mythology which was started by the sages-occultists from the film ‘Stalingrad’. The most important character in the mythology is sergeant Polyakov. He is like a prototype of Plato Karataev from the novel ‘War and Peace’, and Plato Karataev as we all remember from our literature course at Soviet school was the author’s voice of Leo Tolstoy. Therefore, sergeant Polyakov acting as author’s voice of Fyodor Bondarchuk, is ‘the personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth and a good-thinking man of the people’. When Polyakov appears (he is deliberately all grimy as if just out of fight from hell), Gromov asks him: ‘And what the devil are you?’ Polyakov replies: ‘I'm not a devil. I am an angel!‘ (with a smile, exposing a set of white teeth). This ‘angel’ remembered Lord after commander Gromov had murdered a woman with her child, i.e. he is supposed to be a believer. In the final scene before his death sergeant Krasnov tells the ‘righteous‘ Polyakov: ‘Well, Angel? Is it time to ascend to heaven?’ Polyakov replies with a smile: ‘Why just to heaven? To Paradise! I’ve got a pass’. Polyakov’s smile is a reference to the evangelical tradition: ‘Christ is most likely to smile rather than laugh, he has a condescendingly sympathetic smile, it is a forgiving smile, a smile meaning a sign of His greatness and understanding, incommensurability of merciful God’s omnipotence and human weakness and delusion‘ (quoted from a Doctor of Philosophy, Professor A.V. Golozubov’s book). Next, let us remember that it is ‘righteous’ Polyakov who soothes and comforts the weeping Katia offended by ‘sniper’ Chvanov’s mockery (‘You've been here with the Germans, and you are saying nothing...’), whose words could be considered as a hint at both Germans violence and her probable sin. We can see a direct correlation of our ‘righteous’ man with Christ who is the Comforter for both the offended: ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28) and the sinners: ‘... and if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous ‘(Jn. 2:1). But there are two key scenes in which ‘righteous’ Polyakov shows spirit different from Christ’s, his alien Russianness. They are the shooting of ‘a seaman’ and the murder of a woman with her child. That is why we can see that sergeant Polyakov’s character has Alien’s horns even though Bondarchuk considers him righteous, we put this word in quotes.

Katia is a pure soul despite the dark hair, the antipode of the fallen girl Masha with blond hair. She wins our favour with her sincerity, purity, kindness, integrity of her character, she is emotional and spontaneous. Katia is a sort of guardian angel for the building and soldiers. ‘When the girl gave her name, the soldiers came for themselves for a second and their faces enlightened’ (from Natalia Radulov’s blog). We have to add that theme song that began to sound at that moment was special and bright. Katia’s originally asexual appearance and her habitat emphasize her angelic essence (she was taken for a boy first). Unlike the other civil people Katia doesn’t live in the basement, she does upstairs, in her apartment, and whistling bullets cannot hit her angelic incorporeity. It’s significant that once the guardian angel Katia had left the building, it was destroyed, and all the soldiers were killed. Katia watched them dying from the top of the fire tower as if from the heaven. However, Katia also was ‘used’ by F. Bondarchuk to justify euthanasia (see the scene of the ritual burning). She took a sort of ‘metaphysical fall’ under the influence of ‘serpent-tempter’ Chvanov in the further scene of murdering a German near ‘the watering place’ (but she realized her fall at once and repented of it). We have to clarify that according to our system of values Katia committed no sin in the last scene. There is, however, another mysterious scene that takes place in ‘a strange place’ (after climbing up the fire tower along with Astakhov she says: ‘It is strange the Germans are everywhere but not here’) where Katia and Astakhov admire the romantic view of War glow as if they sit ‘on a cloud’. Whose side is guardian angel Katia on in this battle between Good and Evil?

‘Sniper’ Chvanov is an antithesis of ‘righteous’ and ‘angel-like’ Polyakov. He is neither more nor less a demon of defilement in Bondarchuk’s ‘epic’ mythology (mind you that he stands with his back towards all the heroes but the fallen girl on the mythological picture). As the saying goes, ‘the devil is in the details’, and we are going to reveal them now. First, sniper Chvanov is a mocker (remember how he was mimicking Nikiforov’s silences early in the film), scoffer and vulgar man of Comedy Club level. Let me explain the abovementioned with the quote from A.V. Golozubov’s book: ‘D.C. Likhachev noted the fact that ‘laughter was a steady sign of the devil’ in the ancient religious culture (‘Laughter in Ancient Russia'). Secondly, ‘sniper’ Chvanov’s demonic character is unmasked during his encounter with guardian angel Katia. Early in the film, there's a symbolic episode: guardian angel Katia runs into demon Chvanov in the corridor; he rudely stops Katia, his hand resting on the chest. He goes on sneering at her further too:

• Scene with flasks (15 sec). Katia is going for water and collecting the flasks of the soldiers. Chvanov is reaching out his hand with the flask and saying mockingly: ‘Will you bring me back?’. Then he says after the girl insultingly: ‘She’s blessed. Weak-minded, in general. Have it and enjoy it. She is so... cute, well-built‘.
• Scene of Katia’s insults (45 seconds). Chvanov turns to Katia in his usual cheeky tone: ‘Gonna learn shooting?.. Or no longer want?‘. Then suddenly follows a put-down: ‘Wonna naughty, wonna bawdy, wonna shoddy, wonna your body. You've been with the Germans here, and you are saying nothing... ‘. When about to leave he is playing a sound that is indecent in this context and implies that Katia was raped by the Germans. ‘Righteous’ Polyakov condemns Chvanov: ‘What a man! He speaks like spitting. His mouth is dirty, dirty‘(in Ukrainian titles say ‘lecherous mouth‘).

‘And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair’ (George Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage). Demon Chvanov’s sarcasm drives angel guardian Katia to tears according to the canons of demonology. The given scenes convince us that ‘sniper’ Chvanov is a morally depraved person ‘in general’. ‘Righteous’ Polyakov names him - ‘dirty mouth’ – and we remember this definition for ‘sniper’ Chvanov. We have to gain a grain of knowledge from the last scene: demon Chvanov is a kind of Mephistopheles to Katia since he seduces her with his knowledge offering her to learn shooting. We shall mention the real jeering sense of this mockery in Part 3 again. Jeering the Soviet snipers and sniper movement of Stalingrad defenders. We also note one more interesting detail: F. Bondarchuk described Chvanov’s character in his interview as ‘a man-lizard who keeps jerking his head and licking his lips’. Lizard is a reptile in fact, and it bears a resemblance to the snake-tempter.

‘Dumb’ tenor Nikiforov is ‘Lucifer’, ‘Satan’, ‘a fallen angel’; he is the Angel of Death Samael from Judaism coming for sinners with the serrated knife. The reason of his fall consists in our filtration camps being the embodiment of ‘satanic Evil of bloody underworld’. He sits with his back towards us in the symbolic black tailcoat on the mythological picture. ‘Lucifer’ Nikiforov is deprived of grace to chant, he can sing only by the grace of the heavenly forces of Good (at the request of the guardian angel Katia in honor of her birthday).

• ‘O you, the wisest and fairest of the Angels,
• God betrayed by destiny and deprived of praise!’

Charles Baudelaire verse ‘Litany of Satan’ of the controversial book ‘Flowers of Evil’ (1857).

When touching upon Lucifer, we have to cite the following quote as well:

• ‘Symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov opposed two satanic elements to each other: the first one was Lucifer’s, ‘the spirit of indignation’, ‘closing force’, the deification of personal will, and the second - Ahriman (Angra Mainyu), the ‘spirit of corruption,’ ‘demoralizing force’, disintegration of personality. ‘Works, Part 1., Dictionary, LUCIFER, S.S. Averintsev.

This is a quote from S.S. Averintsev who was a prominent Soviet cultural and biblical scholar. His article about Lucifer entered the encyclopedia of ‘Myths of the World’ and other publications, and it is very common in the Internet. It is worth noting his membership in the ‘human rights’ PEN Club since 1995, the Masonic organization and sectarian circle as well as in Rotary clubs, L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology, New Age, pseudo-Orthodox and other false teachings. This aspect of S.S. Averintsev’s activity shows him as a new Russian ‘omniscient’ Faust. Relying on such an authoritative opinion we point out that ‘Lucifer’ Nikiforov embodies the first satanic element in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’, i.e. ‘spirit of revolt’ and demon Chvanov does the second one, ‘the spirit of corruption. At the same time, ’Lucifer’ Nikiforov demonstrates his superiority over the demon Chvanov: in the scene where Chvanov is sneering at Katia (‘Blessed... weak-minded... Have it and enjoy it’), Nikiforov significantly raises his fist to Chvanov’s ‘dirty mouth’ and the git immediately retreats.

It is difficult to say something about Krasnov and Astakhov at all. They look like two archangels of Good: the first is stern but compassionate, he wears black (a jacket, he’s a sailor), the second is soft but open and has dignity, he wears white (white fur cap with ear flaps). Krasnov’s distinction was shown in a way in the scene of shooting silly ‘seaman’ and Astakhov’s in a scene of admiring the romantic view of War glow.

Finally, the commander Gromov in ‘epic’ mythology of the film is like the archangel Michael (like God) who is an Archistrategos (i.e. a commander) of the heavenly host of angels according to the Christian tradition. However, his image is not canonical. The film occultists put ‘Archistrategos’ Gromov at the head of heterogeneous army of angels, both angels of Good (Krasnov Astakhov) and angels of Evil (Nikiforov and Chvanov). ‘Archistrategos’ Gromov includes both hypostases of Good and Evil. That is why he rebels against the ‘righteous’ Polyakov; he proudly considers himself equal to him and thinks he has the right to pardon and execute (in the scene of shooting the silly ‘seaman’). ‘Archistrategos’ Gromov like ‘righteous’ Polyakov is a sinister character; he repeatedly displays the other Russianness and protects the other values in the film. We can clearly see the Alien is masked under the guise of the heroic image of the Russian officer.

There is almost nothing about the Germans in the film. A German colonel is an archangel of Evil forces as he is marked with a special sign of lice plaguing him and thus is in line with Chvanov’s ‘dirty mouth’. Nevertheless, this aristocratic colonel is not a mocker; his proud stern spirit matches Lucifer’s. Captain Peter Kahn is ‘Archistrategos’ of the German soldiers, ‘a knight’ and an aristocrat very similar to the angel of Good (from the film’s authors’ perspective). There is a similarity between this ‘knight’ of the old family and ‘Archistrategos’ Gromov in many aspects: they both have a captain rank, they have a similar manly romantic appearance with designer stubble a la ‘George Clooney’ (note that the rest of our soldiers and all fascists are clean-shaven except dark archangel Krasnov). It is also necessary to underline the similarity of their characters - they both have passion for smoking and both are shown us as the defenders of weak women. Finally, the way F. Bondarchuk charactered the commander Gromov, suites both ‘Archangels’ to the ground:

• ‘He’s a man without a family, attachments, he’s ageless and a forever young hero. God of War‘.

Astral planes in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ (hidden text)

Part 1. Dirty myths in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’

• ‘We shot ‘trench truth’‘, said director Bondarchuk in his interview during the ‘loud‘ 3D film premier ’Stalingrad‘ in Kiev on September 30, 13.
• ‘Stalingrad’ is a sacred topic, a sacred story...’ claimed ‘Stalingrad’ producer Rodnianskiy.

Myth of the Red Army looting

F. Bondarchuk ‘threw light’ on the Red Army looting in a special scene at the beginning of the film; a pair of ‘dirty’ heroes - ‘sniper’ Chvanov and a silly ‘seaman’ were the main characters of the scene. We put these words in quotation marks to avoid denigrating the Soviet snipers and sailors’ glorious names (the approximate time of each scene is in brackets here and below).

• Looting scene (25 sec). A ‘sniper’ and a ‘seaman’ are pickpocketing the dead Germans under the window of the building. There is no music heard, it’s an everyday situation. Soldiers carry one more corpse and go. ‘Sniper’ joyfully exclaims: ‘Oh, officer!’ and bends over the body. The ‘seaman’ tore himself off from another body which he was pickpocketing and joins the ‘sniper’. Both ‘are working’ with the officer’s corpse properly and skillfully proving their experience. Officer’s documents attract no interest and are thrown off. There is a medallion with a photo of the officer with his son in his breast pocket. The ‘sniper’ was looking at it for a while. Then he disappointedly spitted (ugh!) and scornfully threw it away too. Next, the ‘sniper’ is in luck's way. He mumbles contentedly taking a watch off the dead man’s hand and saying: ‘Half a loaf is better than no bread’. The ‘Seaman’ smirks knowingly.

Then follows a remarkable passage on the background of the scene when the ‘seaman’ is shot. It’s interesting to scrutinize it:

• Passage with the watch performed by the silly ‘seaman’ (25 sec). All fighters are busy preparing for the battle. They are inspecting their ammunition, weapons, etc. Commander Gromov is describing dispositions. The ‘seaman’ is the only one who does not listen to him sitting aside and having a good look at a wristwatch. He holds it to his ear, spits on it and rubs it dry. He clearly has just taken it off a corpse. Finally, pleased with his lucky loot he puts it on his wrist, and his face expression bears a resemblance to jackal’s.

Proceeding to analyze these scenes we have to remind the readers that thanks to our discovery of the ‘dark world’ in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ (see Part Zero), the main characters of film ‘epic’ mythology were revealed to us like images of the divine, angelic and devilish persons. We have to explain that we use quotes in order to denote those characters, whom we treat the way different from occult film ideologists’. The most significant character of the film is sergeant Polyakov. He is both ‘a righteous man’ and ‘an angel’. This is a very ominous character because there are Alien’s horns under the ‘sheepskin’ of ‘the righteous man’ visible in a number of scenes. Girl Katia is a guardian angel of the building and our soldiers; she is a complex and contradictory character. ‘The righteous man’ and the guardian angel’s mission in the film consists in preventing other values from penetrating into the viewers soul. ‘Righteous’ Polyakov and guardian angel Katia are opposed by ‘sniper’ Chvanov who is a Bondarchuk and other film ideologists’ demon-molester, moral monster, ‘dirty mouth’. His mission is to belittle our values. The next significant character is ‘dumb’ tenor Nikiforov or, in other words, ‘Lucifer’ and ‘Satan’. He acts like the angel of death, Samael, brutally killing Nazis sinners with his knife. This character’s mission consists in creating a dirty myth about the ‘atrocities’ of Soviet troops. Finally, there is captain Gromov who is like the archangel Michael, ‘archistrategos’. We have already pointed out that film occultists had hid Alien’s sinister nature in the human character of a Soviet officer. ‘Archistrategos’ Gromov’s mission is to strengthen the dirty myth about ‘atrocities’ of the Russians and promote other values using his authority (see Part 2, Topic Euthanasia).

Let’s consider the scenes of looting in essence now. It is important to note that none of our soldiers and even the commander did not condemn ‘sniper’ and ‘sailor’’s behavior and even did not make any comments. We also have to emphasize that this is, perhaps, the only topic in the whole film, which has no author's assessment. In other episodes we can find out Bondarchuk’s position expressly or by implication through his narration, or the ‘atmospheric and immersive’ music, or heroic ‘archistrategos’ Gromov, ‘righteous man’ sergeant Polyakov or guardian angel Katia’s assessment (all these authorities confirm and support euthanasia at once).

Soldiers’ emotionless attitude to their fellow fighters looting should convince us of the myth saying that this crime was habitual and widespread in the Red Army. Commander’s couldn't-care-less attitude looks especially strange because the Soviet troops command punished cruelly for looting, really, taking care of the discipline and morale of soldiers. Commander Gromov proved his concern about discipline when he ordered to shoot ‘the seaman’ (and a good job too). However, he did it not for looting but the other crime – ‘the seaman’ disobeyed his order and attempted to leave the field of battle. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that Alien’s invisible features show up in commander Gromov’s character. We shall be able to see that more than once again.

Just for your information: looting is a serious military offense:

• Russian Federation Criminal Code amended in 1926/edition 11/01/1956 says: 19327. a) Stealing any things on a battlefield founded and belonging to the killed and wounded (looting), entails imprisonment for a term not less than three years.
• Russian Federation Criminal Code of 1960 and later editions up to 1996 (article for looting was removed from the RF Criminal Code on June 13, 1996) says: Article 266. Looting. Stealing any things on the battlefield found and belonging to the killed and wounded (looting) shall be sentenced to three or up to ten years’ imprisonment or the death penalty.

Criminal penalties for looting were invented not by ‘bloody’ Stalin (note that a more severe punishment including the death penalty was amended into the Criminal Code in 1960, when ‘liberal’ Khrushchev was in power, while it was just 3 years in Stalin’s time). Looting was punishable under Peter I and under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich; it is also severely persecuted in all armies of the world since it demoralizes soldiers and officers. ‘Historians noted many times that as soldiers turn into marauders, the army gets corrupted and is no longer able to fight. Discipline quickly reduces and worsens, commanders cause problems, bribing superiors appears at once, easily obtained valuables help to buy out of the orders and guards and the hard work; hard drinking and lechery begin to thrive. Dealers of stolen goods appear and the criminal world ethics begins to reign‘.

After these words, many may feel resentment and misunderstanding. One may wonder if his grandfather who brought back a coffeepot from the war is a looter. No, he isn’t! This is deemed to be a trophy. It is legal and moral according to the international standards but looting is illegal and immoral! Trophy is an unattended or forfeit thing, while looting means to steal corpse’s belongings on the battlefield! E.S. Sienyavskaya has described the problem of trophies in her works in more detail. If someone dares to accuse a Russian soldier of a trophy camera or blame an officer for a gramophone, he has to commensurate these trifling trophies with a burnt house! Or with the whole city! Did not the predators really ravage half of the country? The hanged and burned persons do not count, do they? Looting was not a usual phenomenon in the Red Army. There were trophies in it. The difference between looting and legitimate trophy is just like one between prostitution and legal marriage, sex and love – they are divided with a fine moral line that our Russian soul can understand unlike the other Russianness, which does not recognize it.

Most viewers, however, do not know all these details; the true meaning of the film left unexplained to them. That is why the other Russianness is occupying temples of the Russian souls quietly and secretly. The myth about looting has been made up professionally.

The Myth of the Red Army Atrocities

The film ‘Stalingrad’ instills and persuades the myth of Russian soldiers’ atrocities very skillfully and subtly.

1. Do you remember the attack of our burning soldiers when they were flowing on the positions of unemotional Germans like lava? This scene is as ambiguous as many other things in this film. After all, we understand that people enveloped in flames cannot physically run for so long. Therefore, we have a gnawing feeling: ‘Everything seems to be good but something is not good’.’ The bad thing is that according to the modern signs and images system those burning soldiers, inexorably approaching their enemy, conjure up the undead, the zombies. Thus, someone tries to inculcate in the viewer’s subconscious mind an image of a beast-like Russian opposing a civilized German. F. Bondarchuk justifies this scene by ‘epic’ genre, which is sacrilegious. In fact, the heroism of Russian soldiers is based on indomitable strength of mind that allows to overcome the pain and torment rather than the boundless vitality of the body.

It is worth noting there is a superficial resemblance of this scene to some episodes of the defense of Stalingrad. First, sailor Michael Panikaha’s feat has taken place indeed: when a bullet broke a bottle of Molotov cocktail in his hands and he caught fire, he rushed self-sacrificing toward the tank and ignited it with the second bottle. Secondly, there is a book ‘There Was no Land for us Beyond Volga. Sniper’s Notes’ written by an outstanding sniper Vasily Zaitsev. There he describes a battle that the 284-th Infantry Division under the command of N.F. Batiuk fought on the night of September 23, 1942:

• ‘As the Nazis discovered a concentration of our infantry near a gasoline storage, they engaged by massed mortar and artillery fire. Then dive-bombing started. The gasoline storage was blazing in flame, fuel tanks began to explode, and ground caught fire. Giant bodies of flames were rushing about with thunderous roar above the lines of attacking sailors. Everything caught fire. Another minute and we all will turn into burning ember, firebrands...
• - Advance! Advance!
• The soldiers and sailors on fire tore off their burning clothes on the go but no one laid down his arms. It was an attack of burning naked people...‘

They tore off their clothes – they hurt them. Do you understand that? They behaved like human beings but they did not throw their weapon – it is strength of mind. Moreover, sailor Michael Panikaha was not a zombie, his several steps toward the tank are explained within his human nature, but his strength of mind is limitless and infinite.

2. Next Questionable Scene is Shooting of the Silly ‘Seaman’:

• The scene of shooting on the spot (45 seconds). Commander Gromov has explained the situation to his soldiers and is giving the order: ‘That’s all, comrades, you know your positions. Go to your places. They are about to crawl soon.’ Suddenly the silly ‘seaman’ enters into a dispute with his Commander: ‘... What are we going to do here? Whose order should we execute?‘ After the Commander had explained, the ‘seaman’ gets up and replies with a nasty smile: ‘Your headquarters ordered you, so you have to execute. I still have to find my naval division headquarters’. The command ordered without hesitation: ‘Nikiforov, shoot the sailor!’ Nikiforov instantly raises his gun and shoots. Everyone is watching indifferently, only sergeant Polyakov says reproachfully: ‘You shouldn’t have done so, he might be useful’. The Commander replies with a joke: ‘Why? I’ve got no steamer‘.

Let's try to understand what this many-valued scene means and tries to tell us. Commander Gromov is ‘Archistrategos’, a hero, a great man. The silly ‘seaman’ is a criminal, self-seeker and marauder; he resembles a jackal Tabaqui from Kipling’s ‘Mowgli’ fairy tale. ‘The battle ‘(episode 6:38). There are not only the characters similar in appearance, but also the situations and even intonation are. Tabaqui mimics Council of Pack trying to please Shere Khan: ‘‘We are taking the fight!’ they cried!’ and then he grimaces: ‘But we are going to the north!’. The film plot here looks like that: the Council of soldiers makes a decision to fight but the ‘seaman’ teases their Commander and mimics as if saying ‘I’m going to the north’ (excuse me, to ‘my headquarters’). Characters of other participants of the shooting scene are as follows: sergeant Polyakov is ‘righteous’; ‘dumb’ tenor Nikiforov is cruel, impassive; master-sergeant Krasnov is both severe and mild; lieutenant Astakhov (rescuer’s father) is an indifferent ‘Sissy’, ‘sniper’ Chvanov did not take part in the scene.

Thus, the ‘Archistrategos’ Gromov orders the ‘dumb’ Nikiforov to shoot the ‘seaman’ who laid down the law as a cowardly jackal, and Nikiforov immediately does it. Everything seems to be right in accordance with a military point of view, i.e. a Commander of any army in the world would give the same order in a combat situation to avoid undermining the discipline because it threatens to ruin not only his unit but other troops as well. The filmmakers show us, however, a different, peaceful point of view: ‘righteous’ Polyakov condemns the execution, and this is an authoritative assessment of the most important character in the film. What things make Polyakov-believer, ‘this personification of simplicity and truth’, condemn this shooting? He says: ‘... might be useful’, i.e. considering the shooting in terms of reasonability and usefulness, which is typical Western mentality! Our righteous man would have to say: ‘You should not have done so. We’d better off giving him to the tribunal,’ i.e. to consider it in terms of justice! Next, the Commander jokes about a steamer (in the American style). So his words also reflect the Western mentality. As a Commander, he had to explain: ‘He’s a self-seeker, a coward, a marauder. How might he be useful? He will shoot us in the back!’. There is one more thing that adds ‘ominous’ background to this scene. The ‘seaman’ was shot very quickly, heartlessly, cruelly, and soldiers’ apathy clearly tells us that it was an ordinary situation because shooting took place everywhere and a human life cost nothing in the Red Army at that time. There is also sailor Krasnov’s perspective who watched with condemnation silly man making faces, and he even reached out his hand trying to stop shooting, although it would be more natural to hear from severe Krasnov its approval: ‘You’ve done it, bastard!’. In general, there is ambiguous schizophrenia in the scene.

Let's assess this ambiguity now. Commander Gromov legitimately ordered to shoot the silly ‘seaman’ according to the situation and his powers. His words about the steamboat were a lie since a real Commander could not answer this way; he's neither a crime boss, nor an American ranger. So it is obviously an Alien’s grin. Reproach of ‘righteous’ Polyakov comes from another Russianness, it’s the same soft Alien’s lies. Severe Krasnov’s softness is also a lie, because this ‘jackal’ defamed the sailor name. ‘Silent’ tenor Nikiforov’s impassivity is a lie since he is an artist, i.e. he has to live emotional life. We shall see further that he carries a tailcoat with a bow-tie throughout all fronts. The ‘ominous’ background is an artificial reality the abovementioned lies have formed.

However, the audience has no time to realize that all because the scene lasts for 45 seconds only, and then another key one quickly catches their attention in which the Germans are rounding up people for unprecedented action, a ritual burning. Disquieting music begins to sound and it tells us that something terrible is about to happen. Therefore, audience’s consciousness is blurred and it experiences cognitive dissonance, contradictory feelings are tangled up and eventually the only impression leaves that ‘something is bad in the Red Army, there is something sinister and cruel’. By doing so ‘one more brick’ about Russians’ atrocity is laid into the subconscious myth.

3. Meanwhile, a scene of ritual burning of a woman and her child is going on whipping up into horror. We will analyze it in detail in another section below but now we can state only one thing - Commander Gromov shoots the poor woman and her child with a sniper rifle to save them from suffering burn alive. There is a small but important remark to this scene - Katia screams hysterically even before the burning starts: ‘Shoot them!’. That that Katia called for, ‘righteous’ Polyakov silently approved and the Commander performed, is an act of euthanasia, i.e. killing victims in order to save them from suffering even without their formal consent. After watching this scene a conservative and religious part of the West society brought up on traditional values can say: ‘Yes, Russian soldiers are savage barbarians, they don’t believe in Christ and are brutish. Thus, one more brick is laid in the myth of atrocity. As for Russia, I think people will understand that this scene about euthanasia is another lie about the Battle of Stalingrad and the Great Patriotic War.

What idea should this scene add to the subconscious image of an ‘atrocious’ Russian according to the authors’ opinion? It is the thought that, if necessary, a Russian wouldn’t hesitate to kill a woman and a child.

4. The culmination of the film ‘Stalingrad’ is a scene of killing a fascist who came for water. They film authors planned that the ‘atrocities’ of Russian soldiers should come to a climax in it. All previous key stages are tightly connected with this scene and prepare the audience to the right perception according to the author's point of view, i.e. to the other Russianness’.

• The scene of killing a fascist who came for water (75 sec). The fascist ‘like a goose’ is running for water trustingly throwing up his hands with jars toward our positions and acting as if he is innocent and came to Russia not to kill but drink some water. Katia is holding a sniper rifle; she is taking aim at him and ‘sniper’ Chvanov commands: ‘Kill him.’ Commander shouts: ‘Stop!’. The camera is zooming in and shows the fascist close-up to enable us to have a good look at the murder in detail and be personally imbued with the tragedy to occur. Everything freezes. Katia pulls the trigger. Gunshot sound breaks the silence. The bullet pierces the fascist’s chest, we can clearly hear flesh squelch; we can see a fountain of blood and a cloud of dust; the fascist is falling down slowly and we can hear the echo of the shot as if the whole world shuddered. ‘Immersing’ music begins to sound sadly; it reminds a requiem for the soul of an innocent victim. The Commander says tragically: ‘What have you done, you moron!’ How much pain is expressed here! Chvanov replies quietly: ‘What have I done, Commander?’. Katia begins to realize her moral fall and lowers her gaze in shock and remorse. The Commander says: ‘You killed a soldier walking for the water!’. Chvanov chuckles: ‘He is a fascist rather than a soldier’. The commander furiously says: ‘Even animals do not devour each other at a watering!’. Chvanov replies: ‘Do you know the verse, Comrade Captain? Every time you can see him, you have to kill him!‘.

Let's try to understand this nonsense. Images of characters have become clear to us by this moment. We already know Commander Gromov as a person whom the righteous’ Polyakov has blamed for shooting the silly ‘seaman’. Also we have seen the Commander shooting a woman and her child without hesitation. Thus, we have been led to believe that the Commander is cruel and ruthless even for the Russians. ‘Sniper’ Chvanov is a demon, marauder and moral monster; he’s got a ‘dirty mouth.’ Katia is a bright and innocent image of a wonderful girl, a sort of a guardian angel. In fact, the demon Chvanov seduced her in a way (from F. Bondarchuk’s point of view) tempting her to kill the fascist. Therefore, the main conflict in the scene is between Commander-hero Gromov and ‘sniper’-marauder Chvanov.

It is also important to note that the present action follows the scene of the ritual burning of a woman with her child, which opened in fighters such hatred for the Germans that they rushed into the melee with a superior number of the enemy forgetting about the order to protect the building and thereby jeopardizing their main task of covering the crossing. As viewers we remember the explanation of the German colonel that the burning was not an atrocity but a sort of a simple ritual (according to the film’s authors it was a crime but not atrocity). However, our soldiers do not know that and take the act for an atrocity. We are instilled subliminal ideas that our soldiers had never seen Nazi atrocities before and that is why the picture of burning impressed them so much.

Thus, in terms of hierarchy of values the film’s authors hold to, the scheme of the episode is as follows:

• ‘Righteous’ Polyakov as a supreme hierarch condemns ‘archistrategos’ Gromov for shooting the ‘seaman’; ‘archistrategos’ Gromov, in his turn, exposes demon Chvanov blaming him for killing a Fritz; repentant Katia realizes her moral fall and lowers her gaze which confirms that Gromov was right; Gromov condemns clearly and Katia does tacitly the murder of the fascist even after Nazis atrocities in the previous scene, i.e. our ‘atrocity’ turns out to be worse than the Nazis’.

Commander Gromov was shocked at the murder of the fascist who came for water. Even he, a cruel and merciless ‘God of War’ who had got used to killing without hesitation before, realized the depth of the utter atrocities and abominations of what had happened, and condemns it as the universal evil! It’s interesting to note that there is a reference to Rudyard Kipling’s fairy tale ‘Mowgli once again. The phrase ‘even animals do not devour each other at a watering!’ is about ‘water truce’ of the animals during the drought heralded by wise elephant Hathi (episode 3:58). ‘Mowgli’ is a favorite cartoon of all Soviet and Russian children; the adults also love and respect it. Therefore, appealing to the image of the beasts, which allegedly do not devour each other at the watering (they do! Watch National Geographic!), is a consciousness manipulation trick when subliminal images are used for the suggestion that the Russian soldiers were even much worse than beasts! When ‘sniper’ Chvanov tries to protect his right to kill fascists ‘at the watering’ by reminding about his younger brother who had been killed, it looks obviously weak because Chvanov is a moral monster and he’s got a ‘dirty mouth’, i.e. Chvanov has no credibility and respect. His ‘dirty mouth’ also says: ‘Do you know the verse, Comrade Captain? Every time you see him, you have to kill him!‘. Calling a ‘verse’ K. Simonov’s ‘Kill him!’ written by heart blood (we'll listen to it below) is blasphemy which the filmmakers entrusted to commit to the vilest character of the film, i.e. a demon (at least, the silly ‘seaman’ had already been shot). Chvanov‘s ‘dirty mouth’ has to devalue this argument in the eyes of viewers thanks to K. Simonov’s lines.

Let us review this nonsense again. The fascist could not walk carefree to ‘the watering’; it is a lie since the Germans themselves always hunted for our soldiers who came for water (see below for evidence), and could not rely on a fabulous ‘water truce’. Chvanov the fighter, even being a moral monster and marauder, had in our hierarchy of values a sacred right of a soldier to kill any fascist even coming for water. Katia had experienced the Nazis’ brutality and violence and had the moral right to avenge of herself, her dead mother and sister, all the victims of her friends and neighbors of her building. A real Commander Gromov could not condemn the murder because spirit of hatred lived in every soldier and, of course, every Commander, and it dictated only one order: ‘When you see him, just kill!’. A Soviet Commander who condemns killing fascists is an Alien in the uniform of a heroic Russian officer, a monstrous mutant bringing us the other Russianness and the turn of civilization.

Let me say about the so called ‘water truce’ and Nazi’s ‘cultural mercy’ in the war. The older generation remembers the story of the Brest Fortress heroic defense in June 1941 and how much blood its defenders shed for water (i.e. we paid blood for water from the first days of the war). Alexander Shcherbin writes about that:

• ‘It is worth regretting that at that time such a captain Gromov did not instruct Hitler's warriors of the 45-th Infantry Division who were firing point-blank the Brest fortress defenders trying to get to the water of Mukhavets and Bug. There were a lot of the wounded, women and children who desperately needed water in the large quantities over there but it did not stop the Reich’s soldiers‘.

And let the witness from the sites ‘Children of Stalingrad’ and ‘Historical Truth’ score the last nail in the coffin of the myth about the fabulous ‘water truce’ during the Battle of Stalingrad:

• ‘Water. What seemed to be more than it in Stalingrad? Nothing else but water because the Volga was so close. But it was water that we lacked so much in basements... Price of water was often very high, it cost human life. It was the price some of my peers paid hiding like me in the boiler room of a hydrolytic plant building. It was the place from which in September some daredevils went for water to glaciers located near the elevator. Alas, none of them came back... A German sniper was sitting on the top of the elevator and shot everyone who approached him...‘.
• ‘I was puffy from hunger and half-naked (all clothing was changed for foods) and every day I went to the Volga for water under artillery fire. It was necessary to push and slide apart the corpses, which covered surface water near the shore. The Germans fired mortars even single targets and did not allow to come closer to water in the daytime.‘

But the audience, especially the young, have no clue about it. Gromov and Chvanov’s dramatic dialogue continues 35 seconds, then other scenes grip the attention of the audience and even adults have no time to think them over. So this way one more ‘brick’ of myth about ‘atrocities’ of Russians is instilled into an inexperienced person’s subconsciousness.

5. Cruelty of our soldiers is relished in a number of episodes. Twice camera shows a close-up how ‘dumb’ Nikiforov dispassionately plunges a knife into a German body and turns it crunching. In another episode Commander Gromov disembowels a fascist’s corpse and daub his blood on the face to mask. Do we believe that this was a war? Of course, we do. Can we condemn the Red Army soldiers who fight so desperately? Of course, we can’t. They can kill the fascist bastards in any way and use any means for that. The fascist scum invaded our country, killed millions of our people and brought untold suffering to the Russian people. Thus, they put themselves in our hierarchy of values onto the position of utter metaphysical evil, which must be won at any cost and by any means.

So, we believe that our soldiers cruelty is truth. But there is a Malchish-Kibalchish’s painful sensation disturbing us here again: ‘Everything seems to be good, but something isn’t not good’. The problem is there is no proportionality between the images of our soldiers and images of the Germans. Cruelty of our soldiers is on the screen, it is savoured close-up but the cruelty of the Germans is behind the scenes, though; it is somewhere far away expressed by F. Bondarchuk’s indifferent voiceover. If there is no proportionality, the war image completeness and perfection are violated. And when there is no completeness and perfection, it means there is no Truth of war in this film. And if there is no Truth, thus, it all works for the same myth of the ‘atrocities’ of the Russians.

6. Eventually we got to the final episode - the murder of a fallen girl Masha.

• Death scene of a fallen girl Masha (100 sec). Alarming music is sounding. Captain Kahn leaves the building, but ‘sniper’ Chvanov does not touch him (!). Before the German makes five steps, the fallen girl Masha appears on the doorstep and gently asks him: ‘Are you coming back?’. Chvanov instantly takes aim at her. Music stopped, and so did the world around. Chvanov shoots muttering: ‘German broad’. The girl is slowly falling down; there is a little dot in the middle of her forehead, it’s a bullet hole. Life is dying out, we hear the girl’s last slow exhale. A new theme song begins, it is ‘atmospheric’ sadness. The camera is zooming in the girl’s sprawled body, her beautiful blond hair is scattered, and wind is softly swaying one lock. Tribulation minute is on earth. Captain Kahn straightened up near the girl's body. Music becomes courageous theme as if calling for retribution. He screams ‘Russian!’. ‘Sniper’ watching the scene in sight violently reloads the weapon but... there is no shot following.

Absurdity of sniper’s behavior when he ‘lays down’ (a Chvanov’s expression) a Russian girl, even though she was fallen, instead of a German officer, slips away from the audience. All eyes are on the tragic denouement of ‘love story’ taking place ‘against the background of one of the bloodiest battles in the history of mankind’ (as they say in the film advertisement). Music (i.e. the author's opinion) tells the viewer: the crime happened and love is killed. German captain Kahn, a positive character in the value system of the film’s creators, condemns this cowardly murder around the corner. He is like a real Teutonic knight rises proudly and fearlessly in all growth near the body of the fallen girl and calls his enemy: ‘Russian!’. Shocked ‘sniper’ Chvanov is unable to shoot a German officer even though he reloads his weapon.

It is noteworthy that other film characters are not present in this scene, and it seems at first glance we will not hear their comments. Let's note, however, that Katia condemned the murder of the fallen girl in absentia when she was indignant with ‘sniper’ Chvanov’s suggestion to shoot the girl and said: ‘Are you nut?’ (it was in the scene before the murder of the German at ‘the watering’). Girl Katia, as we already know, is a clean and openhearted character, a voice of conscience in this film, so the authoritative assessment has been given.

It’s important to note one more detail. This scene unfolds against the backdrop of another exciting one in which Nikiforov performs his last feat: he first throws a grenade and undermines the Germans, and then uses a stratagem and brutally kills a German colonel sacrificing himself (you remember he's Samael, the angel of Death, coming for sinners with a serrated knife). This definitely heroic act is contrasted with stupid murder committed by ‘sniper’ Chvanov, thus enhancing his conviction.

Let us make our assessment too. We join Katia’s opinion that Chvanov is a fool. Of course, the punishment of the fallen girl through her murder is disproportionate to her offense. She ought to be judged, as it happened in Soviet Union. In France 20,000 women were condemned for cohabiting with Germans (for the so-called ‘horizontal collaboration’) according to the law adopted in 1944. They were inflicted upon a penalty of public humiliation on the streets. In Soviet Union those were put in prison. It was much harsher. But every society has its own laws according to the mentality, culture and current circumstances. We had our own, the French – theirs. Scale of the fascism crimes in the USSR and France is incommensurable. Such women were formally condemned harsher, but who can evaluate what punishment brings more suffering: either to go to jail or be publicly humiliated and become a social outcast. Anyway, the punishment according to law is different, but the assessment of the act is the same: it is a universal crime for any healthy society (General Charles de Gaulle is so great because he returned the honor for the French, i.e. the moral health), since common interests are above the personal ones in hierarchy of values of such a society (at least they were for the French in a situation of war and national humiliation) and honor prevails over salvation through treachery:

• ‘And until you have killed him, don't
• Talk about your love - and
• Call the house where you lived your home
• Or the land where you grew up your land’.

But what does our audience feel? They will have squeamish precipitate of ‘atrocities’ of the Russians again because they have no time to think. Nikiforov performs his feat and we bow our heads in memory of our heroes. However, the air is filled with the pernicious spirit of the other Russianness.

Myth of the Instability of the Russian Soldiers’ Spirit During the Battle of Stalingrad

• ‘They fought for Katia’ ((Dm. Puchkov/Goblin)).

There is one scene in the film ‘Stalingrad’ that has caused perhaps the greatest outrage among viewers. It happens when the filmmakers expressed their doubts about the intestinal fortitude of the Russian soldiers in a dialogue between two protagonists:

• The Commander and Katia’s talk (35 sec). The Commander expecting a Germans’ decisive assault and urging Katia to get farther into the rear positions, tells her about his fighters: ‘They are now fighting for neither the Motherland nor Stalin, they are fighting for you now... Motherland cannot be killed, it is big... If you are, they’ll give up’.

Can you imagine that a Soviet Commander on November 16, 1942, just three days (!) before beginning our historical attack and breaking fascism’s back, admits that his fighters could give up?! It was the Germans who did instead! They fled in panic along with the Italian and Romanian divisions! It was their generals, famous Prussian aristocrats, who negligently missed preparation of our strategic offensive and concentration of forces in the main direction of impact! It was our State Defense Committee (GKO) headed by Joseph Stalin that was able to mobilize resources of the exhausted and exsanguinated country to deploy new weapons production, construct new railway lines unprecedented in terms as well as to supply the army with all necessities. It was their highbrow intellectuals who having enormous human and material resources of all satiated Europe and having occupied the most important economic zones of the USSR, failed to beat us for armaments. The German command sent ‘tons of candies (!), dozens of boxes of condoms (!), knitted sweaters, ladies' coats (!), muffs, gloves, caps with ribbons and without them (!), slippers, home shoes made of camel wool, pot warmers, boots for skates (!)‘(source). Some think that material resources are the most important thing in the war. We believe that the most important thing is to beat the enemy's spirit, though, and it will create the matter necessary for victory.

Do you feel the Commander Gromov’s heroic image stinking of Alien’s pernicious breath? You can see him, Alien, making faces and trying to seduce young and tender souls as well as breaking elders’ ones filled with gloom. Do you want to know the truth? Here is the testimony of Konstantin Simonov, our great poet who wrote those extremely harsh lines within one day at the Stalingrad front when Germans were coming up to the Volga. He is now appealing to you, listen to his verse: ‘Kill him!’ says Simonov. Do you understand? The spirit of that time and the short name of this spirit are emphasized in the word «hatred»! Hatred for the enemy, the fascist scum, which burned our villages and towns, hung and shot, tortured and raped millions of people! This spirit broke into the ‘ether’ through the hearts of our poets and writers in July 1942 at the Stalingrad front and spread rapidly throughout all other ones. Enormous flame of unspeakable suffering and loss, total enslavement threats and thousand-year history loss created a smashing plasma sword in the Russian soul - the holy spirit of hatred and revenge, which brought death to fascism. ‘Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind...’.

The emergence of hatred was caused by a number of circumstances, among which there were widespread evidences of Nazi atrocities in the occupied territories. During our winter offensive of 1941-1942 many German photographic and film materials as well as letters of German soldiers and staff documents showing unprecedented torture, murder, rape of the civilian population were captured. Moreover, our operators were able to film the villages and towns liberated from the Nazis. Thanks to these materials the Nazis atrocities became clear and evident and appeared in newsreels. Information about the atrocities was also published in the newspapers. It filled the Russian soul with resentment and anger toward fascism, and at the certain time of the extremity in July 1942 it resulted in a spirit of hatred.

Hatred! Hatred for the enemy! In July 1942 practically every soldier has read or heard Simonov’s ‘Kill him!’ or Ehrenburg’s ‘Kill!’ and other calls of our writers and poets. On July 28, 1942 the famous order number 227 ‘Not a step back!’ was issued. It was read out to all the troops and has played a prominent role in strengthening the spirit and discipline. This spirit of hatred was shown in August 1942 throughout all fronts. It was not yet that clear in 1941, and it apparently was not shown to such an extent after 1942, when it merged tightly with the spirit of confidence in victory. It was a special moment, both desperate and decisive. If Moscow had been given up, it would have been infinitely painful, but the army would be able to go on fighting. If Stalingrad had, however, how would they have been able to fight without traffic and communications and connection to the oil-bearing regions of the Caspian Sea, without fuel?

Ilya Ehrenburg remembers the spirit of Russian soldiers at the beginning of the war in his book ‘People, Years, Life’:

• ‘At the beginning of the war, our soldiers had no hatred for the enemy, on the contrary, they felt some respect for the Germans associated with their foreign culture. This was also a result of education. In the twenties and thirties every Soviet schoolboy knew the cultural traits of many nations: the density of rail networks, the number of vehicles, industry development, the spread of education, social hygiene. Germany was one of the first ones in all the spheres. The Red Army soldiers found books and notebooks for diaries, advanced razors and photos in war prisoners’ pockets and bags. ‘What a culture!’ the Red Army soldiers and Penza farmers said admiringly and at the same time sadly showing German lighter that looked like a tiny revolver‘.
• ‘I remember a difficult talk to the gunners at the forefront. The battery Commander was ordered to open fire on the highway. His soldiers did not move. I lost my temper and called them cowards. One replied me: ‘You cannot just cannonade over the road and then move away. You ought to allow Germans to approach closer and try to explain to them that it's time to come to their senses, to rise up against Hitler, and we will help them do this’. Others assented sympathetically. A young and seemingly intelligent boy said: ‘Who are we shooting? The workers and peasants. They believe that we are against them, we give them no chance...‘.

Here is the a memory of my close relative about summer of 1942; he was a teenager at that time and survived the war in the village of Otrozhki on the left bank of the Voronezh river, 7 km from the city of Voronezh that was occupied by Germans (Stalingrad direction):

• ‘At the beginning of July 1942 there was a big panic, our troops fled throwing a lot of things at the station. There were times of famine, we, boys, climbed over the carriages and found some unattended food; it helped to feed our families. I also remember that in August-September our military units began to pass through our station and they had a completely different spirit, they were confident of victory and eager to fight’.

Do you understand that it was in August 1942, namely in the city of Stalingrad which was located in the direction of the main strategic impact of Nazi Germany, when their tanks rolled victoriously to the outskirts of the city, when on August 23 their carpet bombing brutally burned and destroyed Stalingrad, when their power seemed to break our resistance; that's the time when the miracle of the Russian spirit transformation has seized all the people of our great country! And F. Bondarchuk has lost or has not noticed this spirit of the main participants of the Stalingrad Battle either in the heat of love passion or because of his focus upon the creation of the civilization turn. On the other hand, other personal experiences are displayed on the screen by means of deep diving in the 3D IMAX format and slo-mo effects.

The Myth About the Harmlessness of Fascism

1. Nazi atrocities? According to Bondarchuk’s version, there is no need to recall them, even if they had really taken place. Europe is culturally educated and if we begin to rub their nose in genocide of the Russian people during the Great Patriotic War, it will not be tolerant and politically correct. Therefore, it is not worth showing anything like that in the film, just a voiceover will comment that ‘wife was killed, daughter was killed, sister was raped...’. But audience’ impression from the voiceover is thousandfold weaker than from powerful synthetic visual effects (3D) and music (‘immersive’) series. Moreover, monotone insinuating Bondarchuk’s voice sounds in the film so that you feel there is a main thing missing - the love for the Fatherland; this voice expresses indifference at best. But we remember how the voice of the people who have a heart burning with love for their Motherland, sounds and how it can express attitude to disaster and suffering, the triumphs and victories. Listen how much courage, anger and bitterness in Y. Levitan and Konstantin Simonov’s voices or in this Oath! Listen how Y. Levitan proclaims about our successes, of breaking the blockade of Leningrad and the victory at Stalingrad! Not for nothing did Hitler considered Yuri Levitan a Reich’s enemy number one. Marshal Rokossovsky said Levitan’s voice was equivalent to an entire division. Bondarchuk’s voice can probably only demoralize. As a result, the film creates a myth about the harmlessness of fascism.

2. The next scene is to show us a high moral character of fascists through the German Colonel’s assessment of Captain Kahn’s affection to the fallen girl Masha when he obviously neglects his officer duty (to prepare his soldiers for assault, maintain their morale and many other things an officer has to do in a combat situation):

• Scene with German Colonel in the fallen girl’s room (95 sec). Colonel finds Captain Kahn in the fallen girl’s room. ‘What a spectacle! A German soldier lies in the underwear in the Russian whore’s bed. This happens at the time when the German army is trying to keep the bank of the Volga. It’s a perfect example for the rest. I have no words, Captain. What can you say in your defense? I can understand you as a man. But I do not understand you as an officer‘.

Unlike the other scenes in which the performance is made rapidly and the viewer has no time to gather his thoughts, this scene is slow, it includes long pauses for we need to feel the depth of the Captain’s fall in Colonel’s estimation; it was not without reason that he guardedly repeats several times: ‘I have no words’. We are gradually persuaded the idea that the Captain’s behaviour is an extraordinary act, the German army’s morale was high and the German officers abode the rules of honor and controlled the soldiers. But we know about the moral character of German soldiers a little more than the filmmakers do, and we’ll share to share a selection of expressive images with readers (acknowledgments to blogger uglich_jj).

3. One of the most striking scenes in the film ‘Stalingrad’ is Captain Kahn’s speech in front of a line of heroic fascists who stood erect as if they were on parade:

• Captain Kahn’s speech (100 sec). Captain Kahn is reviewing his soldiers before the battle. Epic strong music sounds, which reflects the dignity and power of the German army. You can hear the words: ‘God is with us!’. Music at these words is rising up to the heavens. ‘God is our leader Adolf Hitler. Hitler is Germany. Germany is with us here, in this place... The Volga is behind this building . And behind this building the war will be over. Further behind this building is India. In India all whores have six arms. Just imagine what they can do with their six hands at the same time! Maybe, someone does not want to India, does he?‘ The Captain's face is illuminated at these words...

In this scene the ‘heroic’ image of the German army is promoted quite frankly and without any hesitation. In the film ‘Stalingrad’, which plot is ‘sacred’ for its authors, blasphemous glorification of fascism is going on before our eyes. We are instilled ‘they are not animals, just another army’s soldiers wearing different uniform, speaking a different language, but they are just like us, they also want to go home, to their families, we made war with them a bit, but now let's pay tribute to their courage and heroism‘. However, we remember that these were not just soldiers and it was not just a war. These were the Nazis and they came not to conquer us but destroy. We know the following Hitler's statement about the war in the East:

• ‘We must exterminate the population - it is our mission to protect Germans. I have the right to kill millions of people of the lowest race who are reproduced like worms’.

‘On March 30, 1941 at a meeting of the Wehrmacht high command Hitler stressed that all the efforts in the war against the Soviet Union would be aimed at ’destruction and the fight would be very different from the war in the West. Cruelty in the East is useful for the future.‘ In accordance with the general plan ‘Ost’ 120-140 million people in the USSR and Poland were supposed to be annihilated. The main directions of this policy Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler have stated in the secret memorandum ‘Some Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler’s ideas about the treatment at the hands of locals in the eastern regions’.

Ideological propaganda of the Wehrmacht and SS’ soldiers was carried out during preparation for aggression against the USSR and it contributed in practical implementation of the crime. ‘German soldier handbook’ published for the Wehrmacht staff said: ‘You have no heart and nerves, the war does not need them. Get rid of any pity and sympathy, kill every Russian, Soviet, do not stop even if you face an old man or woman, girl or boy, kill them; this way you save yourself from death, secure the future of your family and be famous forever‘.

Compare the scene of fascism glorification with the above evidence and you see with half an eye that it is not an Alien’s shadow but Alien himself in his entire animal guise. Can you feel your bones begin to crunch because of upcoming turn of civilization?

4. There is no single episode of Germans’ violence, cruelty and atrocities against the locals in Stalingrad. The only exception is the scene of the ritual burning of the woman and her child, but the Germans have an excuse - it is their response to the ‘barbarism’ of Russians who had thrown out Germans’ decaying corpses (but what else to do with them in such situation?). We are again gradually imposed the impression that all Germans’ actions are motivated by ‘cultural’ and ‘ritual’ considerations. Accordingly, the locals walk along the streets without fear and anxiety just trying to get round the Germans who do not pay attention to them. It is worth mentioning a scene of impudent woman with a child trying to break through our positions into the occupied part of the city. She is not afraid of going over there although the German Colonel will say later that she is a Jew. This quite experienced and knowledgeable woman is not afraid of the Nazis in the second year of the war. We wonder if she did not hear about Babi Yar in Kiev where the Germans shot 150,000 Jews in 1941 including women and children. Doesn’t she take care of her child? A Stalingrad resident A.A. Jagodin recalls what was happening over there in fact:

• ‘As soon as the German tanks appeared, massacres began. The Germans hung people to the tunes of mouth organs, saying they fought against guerrillas. There was a man or a woman hanging almost on every safe post. The Nazis burst into basements, cellars, the gaps and robbed, raped...‘.

My mother remembers:

• ‘We were evacuated from the city of Voronezh to Stalingrad on July 2, 1942. A classmate of mine did not leave since her father was a party secretary and had no time to evacuate, so he left for underground work. He stayed in Voronezh with his wife and daughter... They were informed to police, caught and hung on the trees in the park in front of the university - father, mother and their daughter of 17 years old‘.

There is nothing of the kind to show us in the film ‘Stalingrad’. Today's youth grown up and educated by the EGE-test system may not suspect any fraud. Lulling us with nice images of the indifferent Nazis, we are once again gradually and blatantly told a lie promoting a myth of harmlessness fascists in the subconsciousness of the audience.

5. There's a brutal scene of ritual burning of a woman with her child, but the German Colonel has explained to us: ‘We have forgotten our roots and origins in this war. The ancient Germans sacrificed to their gods before a fight’. That is not brutality but a cultural tradition of the Germans; there was no the ideology of fascism, the Waffen SS troops and genocide against Jews and Slavs. Even the flamethrower man before the ritual burning looks not brutally but cynically and good-natured with a cigarette sandwiched carelessly in the corner of his mouth; he quietly lights his partner’s cigarette from the flame and his whole appearance says that it's just a job to burn people, like a modern profession of killer now. I think that Germans themselves will have to review and realize this historically false film since justification of the burning of people with reference to ‘the roots and origins of the ancient Germans’ rather than racist theory of fascism, insults the German nation with its great culture and traditions.

Of course, this episode is severe, but it cannot be compared to the scale of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the Soviet Union. The filmmakers must merely have been ashamed of telling us about it. And we are not ashamed and remember, for example, about the tragedy of the Belarusian village of Hatyn where fascist beasts burned alive 149 inhabitants:

• ‘Brutal fascists rushed into the village and surrounded it... All population of Khatyn from small to large - the elderly, women and children – were driven from their houses and urged into a shed... None of the adults left unnoticed. Only three kids - Volodya Yaskewich, his sister Sonia Yaskevich and Sasha Zhelobkovich - managed to escape from the Nazis. When the entire population of the village was in the shed, the Nazis locked barn door and covered it with straw, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Wooden shed caught fire instantly. The children were crying and suffocating in the smoke. Adults were trying to rescue them. Under the pressure of the dozens of inhabitants the barn door broke and collapsed. Horror-stricken people in burning clothes were fleeing, but the Nazis shot in cold blood with machine guns those who escaped from the flames. 149 people including 75 children under 16 were killed. The village was looted and burned to the ground‘.

I think that this tragedy can cause terror in every person, no matter how cynical he might turn out to be. We consider it as an extreme of violence. But the horror of fascism is that it has no extremes. Let us have the courage and say that altogether there were destroyed and burned 9,200 settlements including 5,947 villages, along with their inhabitants in Belorussia; in 1941 there were 219 villages, in 1942 – 822, in 1943 – 3,731 and in 1944 – 1,006‘.’Scorched earth’ tactics became more widespread in the autumn-winter of 1943-44. In the last period of the Nazi occupation special teams of arsonists were created and they played a role of Wehrmacht in the implementation of total devastation policy in the occupied territory. Their task was to carry out the utter devastation of the territory while Nazi troops retreated. The population was killed or taken to Germany. One of the main methods... was the mass destruction of human settlements together with the residents. As a rule, people were driven to a house, shed or barn, then it was tightly closed and set on fire. The Nazi policy of genocide and ‘scorched earth’ resulted in 2.23 million people killed in Belarus for the three years of occupation. Every 4-th person in Belarus was killed‘.

Total losses of the USSR in World War II amounted to 26.6 million people.

6. Next we see a strange scene of driving Soviet people to Germany for slaves. F. Bondarchuk tried very hard to avoid the cliche. There are neither barking shepherds breaking loose from their chains nor evil shouts of the guards nor severe butt hits nor howling of mad women separated from their children. People are wandering humbly and quietly, the guards are standing still. The scene is mournful but not brutal as it was indeed and was reflected in the memoirs:

• ‘I remember I saw my mother running behind the sled, she wanted to give me a small bag of rusks but fell down into the snow unconscious. And we were driven away. And my mother left with a younger son, my little brother. You know my elder sister Tanya had been driven to Germany even before.’
• ‘We were playing with the sticks with the boys in the yard. ‘A big truck drove in, German soldiers jumped out of it and began to catch us and throw into the body under the tarp cover. They brought us to the station, the truck went backwards to the car and we were thrown inside like sacks... ‘.
• ‘We began to be selected for export to Germany. The selection was made according to the height rather than age, and, unfortunately, I turned out to be tall like my father, while my sister was short like our mother. Then trucks arrived, the Germans were around us with machine guns, I was urged into a truck with straw, my sister was crying but they were repelling her shooting close to her feet. They did not let her come to me. This way... we were separated.‘
• ‘A full carriage... Overcrowded... Full carriage of kids, there was no one older thirteen. First time we stayed in Warsaw. Nobody fed and gave us water...‘.

Here is another memory of a Stalingrad’s inhabitant:

• ‘The Germans have raised us all, began to sort, some with small children were placed in the trucks, and adolescents and adults went on foot. One woman had two infants. Germans began to help women climb into the trucks. One German held two infants in his hands, he has handed over one to his mother and failed with the second one when the truck started. The child began to squeak, and the German stood for a while, then dropped him to the ground and trampled underfoot.‘

This is the most appalling tragedy of our nation: 5 million people were driven from the USSR to Germany during 1942-1944! They were driven to hard labour, which is why the young and strong ones were selected, but babies and old people left, so the families were broken, mothers and children were separated, they were shot for disobedience, but people were still hiding, running away! Isn’t this the brutality of fascism that trampled on all human laws?! But we could see nothing of the kind in the film. It means someone really needs to erase this truth from our memory and create a myth about the harmlessness of fascism.

7. A rape scene of a miserable broken girl by German officer Peter Kahn is a masterpiece of F. Bondarchuk’s film art. The rape scene is consecrated with majestic ‘immersive‘ music having a note of some sadness and sorrow because we have to express sympathy to the German captain - he is about to lose his officer’s honor. There is some justification, though. Herr Captain has just stopped fighting, so you should be tolerant and understand him when he is lust-stricken first and later when he takes hard the loss of his honor. Blogger Frallik believes that F. Bondarchuk kept his head at this crucial moment and used a trick of ‘product placement’ adding advertisement of push-up bra by an unknown brand. I really do not know whether it is worth suspecting him in such pettiness taking into account the billion budget of the film. Well, after the rape follows a very informative scene:

• Scene after the rape (35 sec). Officer’s uniform is folded on a chair. Camera is carefully and cautiously moving above the Iron Cross on the breast pocket and then a touching picture is coming into view: Captain is sitting with his eyes looking up to the sky and his conscience bothering him: ‘Look at this filthy animal, Peter Kahn, bearer of the order of the Iron Cross, of noble Prussian family; Field Marshal Paulus himself invited me to dinner calling me a hero.‘ A mournful face. Music is majestic. ‘It is absolutely impossible to fight against you. You have no idea of honor. You are the bandits who shoot in the back. You are fighting not for victory, but for revenge.‘ A bitter face. Music is getting more majestic and atmospheric. ‘I have come here as a soldier. And you turned me into a beast.‘ Suddenly slight tremor touched girl’s face who was lying in a beautiful pose; she lifted her head, her eyes looking at Peter with confidence, her hand gently reaching out toward him, as if trying to move up to him and protect, to comfort the unfortunate cavalier.

Did you understand everything? It was us who made Germans the beasts because the victim provokes the executioner, thus the victim is guilty towards the executioner in seduction. This is one more justification of fascism, which is written into the subconscious of gullible and receptive audience.

We have to note for reference: Captain Kahn called Paulus Field Marshal, but Hitler appointed him only on January 30, 1943 in the hope that he would commit suicide. Hitler’s radiogram to Paulus especially pointed out that ‘No one German Field Marshal has ever been captured yet.’ But on January 31 Paulus surrendered to the Soviet command.

Let Konstantin Simonov say with all the pain and blood of his heart how the fascists raped our girls in fact:

• ...
• ‘If you don't want to give away
• Her you walked with and didn't touch,
• Her you didn't dare even to kiss
• For a long time - you loved her so much,
• And the Germans cornering her
• And taking her alive by force,
• Crucifying her - three of them
• Naked, on the floor; with coarse
• Moans, hate, and blood, -
• Those dogs taking advantage of
• All you sacredly preserved
• With your strong, male love.
•  
• If you don't want to give away
• To a German with his black gun
• Your house, your mother, your wife
• All that's yours as a native son
• No: No one will save your land
• If you don't save it from the worst.
• No: No one will kill this foe,
• If you don't kill him first.
•  
• And until you have killed him, don't
• Talk about your love - and
• Call the house where you lived your home
• Or the land where you grew up your land.’
• ...

Part 2. Other values in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’

Film ‘Stalingrad’ advertisement promises us: ‘No cliched ideological and propaganda approach’. But we cannot believe it because the first shot of the advertising trailer of a la Russian film ‘Stalingrad’ shows a proud image of the American company ‘Columbia pictures’ that is approaching us overshadowing with its brilliance. This is the power of cinema – one shot is enough to make the situation clear. And F. Bondarchuk’s voice addressing to the West is heard for the whole film:

• ‘Let us join you! We are for euthanasia now, we are for ‘the five fathers‘, we have renounced heroic deeds of our snipers and sailors, the heroism of our girls and adolescents, we have glorified high feelings of Nazi invaders who dropped on Russia on their way to India just because they wanted to love our girls! We even recognize the myths about the atrocities of the Red Army!‘.

We are going to talk about propaganda of other values in F. Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’. The approach to propaganda is not really cliched since there are a lot of innovative techniques from the modern arsenal of psycho-historical war.

Theme of Euthanasia

The scene in which Commander Gromov commits murder of a women and her child, is the most important one in terms of establishing a metaphysical basis of the other Russianness.

• Scene of the murder of the women and her child (60 sec). Germans drive a woman with a child into the bus and prepare a ritual burning. Katia is hysterically screaming: ‘Do anything! There is a woman with her baby ! Shoot them then! They will be burned alive, they will be hurt!‘. A German flamethrower man ignites the bus. Commander with the words ‘Bloody hell!‘ rushes to the ‘sniper‘, grabs his rifle and shoots – first the woman and her child, then the flamethrower man. Sergeant Polyakov says: ‘Forgive me, Lord. Her torture finished.‘

So, we have seen the murder of a woman and a child by Soviet Commander Gromov committed probably under mitigating circumstances: the victims were in unbearable pain and suffering, and the Commander delivered them from this suffering by killing them without their prior consent, i.e. by force. In modern Western liberal society such an action is reduced to the notion of euthanasia :

• ‘Euthanasia (Greek: ‘good’ and ‘death’) refers to the practice of terminating the life of a person suffering from an incurable disease, experiencing unbearable suffering. The term ‘euthanasia’ is now used in various senses: accelerating the death of people experiencing severe suffering, the cessation of life of ‘extra’ people, care for the dying, providing a person with an opportunity to die.
• ... It is necessary to distinguish voluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia is carried out at the request of the patient or according to a previously expressed consent (for example, it’s a common practice in the U.S. to express your will in advance and in a legally valid form in case of irreversible coma). Involuntary euthanasia is carried out without the consent of the patient who is, as a rule, unconscious. It is based on his/her relatives or guardians’ decision, etc. The Council on Ethics and Judicial Affairs of the American Medical Association admits at the same time that these decisions may be ‘unfounded.’ However, in the case of a ‘competent decision’, it is believed that people have the right to make decisions that others consider unreasonable since their decision goes through a competently based process and is compatible with their personal values.‘

There is one nuance - Commander Gromov’s victims were not unconscious but the above definition has a small loophole: it says ‘as a rule, unconscious’. We know what the phrase ‘as a rule...‘ stands for; as the saying goes ‘if you may not do anything, but really want to, you can’. Thus, we have come to the conclusion that a murder is included into the defined circle of concept of ‘euthanasia’, at the very edge of it.

There is another nuance – it is Katia’s call for shooting the woman with her child before the flamethrower man set their bus on fire. Such a murder, if it really took place, would already go beyond the meaning of euthanasia because future victims of physical suffering have not yet experienced it. Here, the filmmakers apparently test the audience for further extension of the concept of euthanasia. We also note that Katia calls on fighters to the murder of the woman and her child being in abeyance, she does not have a complete picture of what is happening, she does not look in binocular like Commander, the distance is large enough to see and hear anything that is going on there. Commander responding to Katia’s hysterical cry says: ‘She's right, Chvanov, shoot!‘. Sniper Chvanov responses: ‘Do you want me to shoot at children?‘. Such Chvanov’s response returns him the dignity of man. Although his response can be understood as a refusal to shoot the children in the square, we will treat it as a refusal to shoot at a child in the bus because in a mythological drama every little thing has its certain meaning. The filmmakers would indicate us: ‘You see how this moral monster showed himself – he did not want to help the suffering people die!’. Well, we are grateful to Chvanov in his commitment to traditional values during the terrible ordeal. It’s a very difficult episode.

So, the ideologists of the film ‘Stalingrad’ using the authority of ‘Archistrategos‘ Gromov, guardian angel Katia and ‘righteous‘ Polyakov (he did not mind, which means that he acquitted the murder), try to make us think about the permissibility of euthanasia. In our opinion, by Christian dogma a murder is a mortal sin. That’s it! It was also a sin among the heathens before the Christian era, and the Hippocratic oath reflects the unacceptability of euthanasia for a person of the Ancient World.

It is interesting to compare in this respect F. Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ and B. Hotinenko’s ‘Pop‘ in which the director despite his bias in creating the image of ‘bloody regime‘ does not cross the line in a similar situation. In the film ‘Pop’ there is a very dramatic scene when the Nazis were hanging four partisans, among them one woman. People were herded together to make them watch and a priest Father Alexander turned out to be there by chance. Partisans were stood up in a truck with the nooses around their necks. Truck starts moving off, the three partisans had no foothold and hung in the loops, the girl was about to, but she managed to cling on to the edge of the truck with her bare feet... At the last moment the truck stuck in a rut and went into a skid; the girl hangs between life and death. She already began to twitch convulsively but her legs were still on the back of the truck. The soldiers tried to push the truck, but their efforts were not enough. Then a Hitlerite, one of the film heroes, pushed it strongly and the truck finally broke out of ruts, the girl hung in the loop with her comrades. Do you remember what Father Alexander shouted later when that fascist came in his home? ‘Get out of my house! Out!‘. And repeated several times to his wife: ‘It was him, him who pushed… you know?‘. When that Hitlerite pushed the truck, he might have helped her to get rid of suffering at the last moment of her life, but in our system of values he committed the murder, a mortal sin.

The architects of civilization turn unlike V. Hotinenko, did without the ‘cliches‘ in the film ‘Stalingrad’ and presented us an image of the other Russianness; they managed to use actors’ impressive emotional acting and the guise of a powerful comprehensive authority of ‘Archistrategos‘, ‘angel ‘and’ righteous man‘ (i.e. ideological occultists of the film ‘cannonaded of all calibers‘) in order to let malicious virus into the souls of audience.

The Theme of ‘Five Fathers’ as the Main Intrigue of the Film

If you did not see the film, there is a short remark: ‘Stalingrad’ begins with a scene of people salvation from collapsed buildings in Fukushima (Japan) in March 2011 after the disaster at the nuclear power plant (!). An emergency squad arrives; a Russian lifeguard rescues a German tourist from beneath the Japanese debris telling her that he had five fathers:

• ‘I had five fathers and all died... all died.’ - ‘Five fathers? It’s not true…‘ - ‘It is, it is. You may not know that. Everything can happen.‘

Our rescuer was born in 1943, he has turn 68, but he's still at the forefront of rescue operations. Obviously, Bondarchuk needed such a weird risky story just to introduce an ambiguous intrigue into the film wondering whether lifeguard mother cohabited with five men or not? This special method of consciousness manipulation called the capture of an audience is based on the ambiguous theme in this case. Probably the very theme of the Battle of Stalingrad did not seem to F. Bondarchuk very exciting, or there lie other ideas. Anyway, the manipulator F. Bondarchuk skillfully keeps intriguing the audience till the end of the film, and everyone is waiting for the weird version becoming finally clear and saying whether the future Fukushima hero’s mom slept with five men or not. In the end, thank God, it has become clear: he had the only father, Astakhov. I think everyone would understand that his mother had four brothers and was their sister and that she had the only husband, if she told her son-rescuer that clearly, especially taking into account that in the English version of the trailer of the film ‘Stalingrad’ our soldiers are called Brothers in Arms. But in this case the film ‘Stalingrad’, according to Bondarchuk’s opinion, would have lost its main intrigue.

Another mysterious intrigue that exists in parallel with the main one may be designated as follows: ‘Six men - five fathers. Who is superfluous?‘ At the very beginning of the film, when Katia met with the heroes of the film for the first time, F. Bondarchuk gently commented off-screen: ‘So they got acquainted - five men and my young mother.’ At that time there were really only five men because sergeant major Krasnov who would be the sixth one, has not yet managed to join them. The same group is displayed on an advertising poster, there is no sergeant major Krasnov on it. So, six men-fighters and five fathers. Who is superfluous? According to F. Bondarchuk’s comment it is sergeant major Krasnov, but the whole film story says it is a demon Chvanov. In fact, Krasnov joined the group of fighters almost immediately after the ‘righteous’ Polyakov and shared their fate till the very end; he is a hero who deserves respect, and how can Katia deny him like a ‘father’ and prefer Chvanov, the moral monster, instead? We can only build our hypotheses and wonder why it was necessary to introduce this intrigue in the film. We may dare to assume that both intrigues (‘five fathers’ and ‘who is superfluous’) are designed to distract the audience's attention from the main theme, let in more murkiness in order to enable film ideologists to do their tricks under this cover the way a circus magician or card sharpie do.

To be able to understand the passage about five fathers, we have to remember the scandal with Masha Gessen (she was a director of the Russian service of American radio ‘Freedom’ at that time), which broke out in April 2013 and caused stormy debate in hundreds of publications (e.g. at the websites of such opposite magazines like ‘Odnako’ and ‘Snob’). In this context ‘five fathers’ mean a paraphrase of Masha Gessen’s children’s five fathers. An Australian radio broadcast on ABC Radio National says that on June 11, 2012 at the meeting with LGBT activists during Sydney Book Festival Masha declared in her candid speech:

• ‘... The institution of marriage should not exist at all’ (applause and jubilation in the hall - 6:38... 6:48 on the audio track). And then followed by another scandalous statement:
• ‘I have three children. They have five parents, plus/minus ‘(7:28 on record). Mary smiled at these words, apparently finding her words funny and waiting for audience support, but the audience froze (!), they did not know how to react. The presenter came to her senses on 7:46 and interrupted Masha: ‘Could you tell us more about that, we are a little bit confused about these five parents‘.

To conclude: if even so well prepared audience was confused, what can we say about us, the former ‘Soviets.’? However, we are not going to wiredraw the conversation far away and talk about the fact that F. Bondarchuk tramples on traditional family values. Just keep it in mind for a while. F. Bondarchuk admitted in one of his interviews that the script was meant for different target groups.

The Theme of Different Love and a Different Hierarchy of Values

1. Primary attention in the film is paid to the theme of love between man and woman. We can see the evolution of two love stories: between five fighters and Katia and between German captain Kahn and girl Masha. Certainly, Katia touched the hearts of all fighters including ‘sniper’ Chvanov; we remember how his face brightened when Katia said her name. But Chvanov has his own ‘romance’ with Katia - he must seduce her metaphysically, which he does in the scene of killing a German at the ‘watering’. The remaining fighters love Katia ordinarily, like humans - they want a simple personal happiness. And that's really beautiful because such love is one of the spiritual values for us. But they were carried away by this feeling so much that Commander Gromov told Katia he had some doubts about their fighting spirit: ‘If you are killed, they’ll give up.’ Now, pay attention! Here the key point – it’s important how the Commander evaluates the change (let’s call it this so far) of his fighters’ spirit and what example of treating such kind of things he shows. But Commander does not upbraid his men for the possible emotional breakdown they turned out to be in, i.e. equal to betrayal of their military duty. Saying nothing on his part is equivalent to the justification and is an example of his tolerant attitude. As this love story is shown exceptionally bright and chaste, we, according to the authors of the film, should have no doubt about their right to such kind of a ‘higher love’ that justifies their possible neglect of their military duty. However, we have some doubts, as always in such scenes of Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’: ‘Everything seems to be fine, but something is not good.’ A bad thing is that our hierarchy of values turns upside down here. The film proclaims personal feelings priority over public duty. We, in our turn, prioritize the latter over the former. Our military duty and love for the Fatherland prevails over our personal love:

• ‘And until you killed him,
• Do not talk about your love.’

We wonder if young Russian viewers can distinguish this substitute. Will they? It's so easy and comfortable to use another hierarchy of values and justify neglecting the public duty with personal circumstances and romantic feelings; also there is nothing to be ashamed of before people because the other Russianness and other morale are tolerant to such behavior.

2. Let us consider another aspect of this romantic story: how such kind of ‘love’ makes progress. There is no sign that our soldiers experience weakness of spirit at the very beginning, but as the relationship is developing, ‘love’ to the girl displaces their fighting spirit, it goes into a new quality and the men turn into the unreliable warriors. That is, they seem to be strong so far but under certain circumstances they may break. It has nothing to do, however, with our traditional understanding of love as an uplifting feeling and the transition of man to a spirit strengthening state when he cannot even think of committing an indecent act because he knows that if he betrays his duty to the country, he will lose the love, honor, dignity, his girl will turn away from him and despise. And even if his beloved dies, the lover continues to commensurate his actions with his duty of honor keeping his love in mind because his love stays by his side invisible and looks at him. A real Commander, our Commander, being aware of such high true love, will always be sure of his soldiers and never express doubt about their fighting spirit. In the film the Commander Gromov neither doubts their right to the other love nor expresses any surprise with the paradoxical result of this ‘love’. Having shown love as a process of human descent, his spirit degeneration, and presenting it as a natural process, the film ideologists made another abominable forgery of our traditional values. This is different love and it is fraught with the threat of the turn of civilization. By the way, we had one more chance to see an Alien’s shadow behind the Commander Gromov.

3. Let us now consider the romance of a German officer and a German ‘broad.’ At the beginning of their affair Masha seemed to be in a broken, confused state. It is worth noting that the guardian angel Katia remains clean and unbroken even after she had been touched by the Germans, while subsequently fallen Masha had been flawed, wanton and broken even before she was touched. No matter whether the body is touched, preserving the temple of soul does. Masha experienced that breakdown when her ‘lover’ raped her. The Captain Kahn abused her body in this scene but spiritually she was not yet fallen. Masha showed no resistance but we can justify her, assuming she was shocked. However, when Masha rides the Captain Kahn’s tracked bike, she makes her metaphysical fall, she is tempted by ‘love’ and betrays her people. On the other hand, she could spit in this bastard’s face and stay with the ones driven away into slavery in order to preserve her human honor and share her people’s fate. Indeed, in our system of values honor is above betrayal salvation. We can see again that Masha’s ‘love’ is not our traditional one. Blossoming of her ‘love’ has led to a moral fall. True love elevates, ennobles, inspires, spiritualizes... The other one makes you sink...

4. And what about the Captain Kahn? Has the love ennobled his soul or cleared from the fascist hassle? After all, he could wake up and ask himself as a Prussian aristocrat, ‘What am I doing here on the banks of the Volga, why am I killing these Russians? They turned out to be like us or the French, they are not a subhuman inferior race’. But nothing like that happens. First, he rapes poor Masha and loses an officer and aristocratic honor because of the ‘love’. He admits to himself that he has become a beast but his fascist essence blames on Masha for this fall. Second, he begins to spend time with Masha instead of committing his combat duties. The Captain loses control of himself, his feelings are more important to him than service, he betrays his duty in fact and makes his moral fall, which soon leads him to death. But again, the author's assessment does not coincide with ours; they justify neglecting military duty with ‘high love’; personal is again above public; the Captain Kahn appears to be a romantic hero in the film, he is a noble knight trying to protect the lady of his heart at any cost.

5. In connection with the novels reviewed, it is very appropriate to underline an Alexander Sherbina’s important thought that heroes of the best military works always worked through ‘a certain way of spiritual formation.’ And what can we see in the film ‘Stalingrad’? Has Nikiforov followed any path of spiritual formation? It’s a tricky question. On the one hand, there is one Nikiforov ‘behind the scenes’ with his cruelty he had gained after being in our filtration camp. That is the ‘callousness’ of our system that caused his brutality rather than the Nazis atrocities. In this sense, he has worked his way of a spiritual rebirth and even, according to some subtle signs (e.g. Nikiforov turned his back to us on the advertising poster as much as the demon Chvanov) the filmmakers condemn his ‘off-screen’s’ rebirth. There is one more thing concerning Nikiforov: he is an artist, tenor, he is dressed up in the tailcoat but he is cruel at the same time. Hence, we are subtly whispered, ‘Scratch Russian tenor’s tailcoat and you’ll find a beast beneath it!’ On the other hand, Nikiforov behaves ‘on-screen’ constantly heroically. Taking into account all the above, we do not agree with the author's assessment of Nikiforov. But the heroes of love novels, as we have shown above, have gone spiritual degeneration. This is, of course, our opinion, even though the filmmakers and the invisibly present Alien entice us with a different system of values.

As for Katia, her love is not clearly expressed and manifested; it has resulted in the only thing we know. It is an MES’ employee Astakhov. We can easily understand, however, her chastity and permanence because she is a guardian angel of the house and men, and the angels never change.

So, let’s try to summarize. In a system of the other Russianness’ values, such kind of ‘other’ love triggers a natural process of prevailing personal values over public ones and is subject not only to justification but approval as well. In our system of values, such kind of ‘other’ love leads to degeneration and breakdown of the spirit, and it is to be condemned because we set public values above personal ones.

Part 3. Jeering at the Army and People in Bondarchuk’s Film ‘Stalingrad’

Do you remember the parable of the blind wise men and the elephant? One passed his hand across an elephant’s side and said it was a wall. The second one touched its tusk and said it was a spear. The third went to the trunk and cried out that it was a snake! And so on.

And where are the ‘blind wise men’ who created the film ‘Stalingrad’ in this parable? As you may have guessed, they are all located in the elephant's ass, where they try to realize what is happening around with all their sense organs. This method of investigation of reality is called ‘through the asshole.’ It creates a different reality, in which the principle of integrity and proportionality is violated, marginal and deviant acting becomes standard. If you ask for water in this ‘reality’, you will be served with a beautiful crystal glass full of sewage water from the toilet sink boasting, ‘We have the best wine glasses - with gold border and shining edges!’

Now we are going to explore what the consequences of applying the method ‘through the ass’ in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ are.

Mockery of the Soviet Sailors-Defenders of Stalingrad

A ‘typical’ Soviet sailor in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ portrayed by means of ‘through the ass’ method is a silly ‘seaman’, marauder, with the habits of an anarchist of 1917, scum and cowardly jackal. ‘Sailor’s’ appearance is repulsive: he is deliberately lop-eared, his facial expression is criminal, thieves’. There in another seaman in the film - sergeant major Krasnov, but he is always in the shadows and does not show himself. Moreover, the filmmakers removed him from the list of the ‘five fathers’, thus humiliating him in some way. Therefore, the audience begins to accept a silly ‘seaman’ as a typical one. It seems that the film ideologists just hate real Soviet seamen and vent their anger on them in this film. One more thing to be added to their hatred is that according to Ozhegov’s explanatory dictionary ‘silly’ stands for ‘big-eared, clumsy, sluggish.’ This is a particular detail in the image of a ‘seaman’, a sort of minor filth, a mockery at these seamen because the seamen by right are proud of their daring, they are brave guys, agile, strong and mentally alert.

The seaman played a prominent role in the defense of Stalingrad. Naval brigades from Sevastopol, Kerch and the Crimea were included in the troops of the Stalingrad Front. The seamen the Caspian Fleet and Volga Flotilla fought as part of marine brigades; tens of thousands of seamen also came to the Stalingrad front from the Pacific Fleet and the Amur Flotilla. ‘In the most intense periods of the Great Patriotic War the Navy sent about 400 thousand seaman to the Red Army, e.g. 146,899 in 1941 and 188,976 - in 1942, as well as 54,100 in the first five months of 1943. In 1942 the seamen having sent to fight on land were fighting mainly at Stalingrad. That year the newly formed divisions and brigades, which had many seamen, were not called ‘marine’ yet. Many seamen of marching companies and battalions replenished infantry formations and units which have suffered losses in battles‘ (source).

For us the image of a Soviet seaman is a hero of Alexander Deineki’s brilliant picture ‘Defense of Sevastopol’. We also know about the exploits of Soviet seamen in Stalingrad. When the seamen in black pea jackets fearlessly rose to attack like black waves during the battle for Mamaev Kurgan, it terrified Germans. Sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich carved immortal monument ‘Stand death!’ devoted to them. But a special character of seaman dedication is an attack when they wear only striped vests. Former Chief of Staff of the 2-nd Guards Army Marshal Biryuzov recalled:

• ‘I had repeatedly been in hot battles but had not seen anything like that before. Pacific Fleet’s seamen fought especially heroically. Many of them took off jackets and wearing only striped vests rushed to the Nazi tanks with some grenades in their hands.‘

‘The seamen have committed many deeds during the battle of Stalingrad. Red Fleet seaman Ilya Kaplunov, anti-tank riflemen of 260-th Infantry Regiment of 86-th Infantry Division (this division consisted of about 4 thousand seamen), hit 5 German tanks in one battle. His leg was torn off by a piece of shrapnel but dying he continued to fire from anti-tank rifle and hit three tanks more. Then, having been wounded in the arm he managed to hit the ninth tank. For this feat seaman I.M. Kaplounov was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union’ (source).

And here are some evidences of Germans who wrote about those battles too. It is an extract from the letters of a German soldier Erich Ott, November 1942:

• ‘We hoped to come back to Germany before Christmas, we thought Stalingrad was in our hands. What a great mistake! This city has turned us into a crowd of the unfeeling dead! Stalingrad is hell! Russians are not like human beings; they are made of iron, they do not know fatigue, they do not know fear. It was severe frost but their seamen were launching an attack wearing just striped vests. Physically and spiritually one Russian soldier is stronger than an entire company of ours... ‘

Note that soldier Erich Otto writes about ‘a crowd of the unfeeling dead’, in which they have turned in. He writes it in November 1942; this is the moment when the film events are developing. Compare the real situation with the scene in which Russian soldiers go in like the living dead, zombies, and which was palmed off on us under the cover of the epic battle at the beginning of the film. So, we are not zombies. They are. Brutalized Nazis lost their human essence raping and killing innocent people. And the German soldier Erich Otto in his testimony from the Stalingrad exposes lies of film ‘Stalingrad’’s ideologists.

Jeering at the Soviet Snipers and Sniper Movement of Defenders of Stalingrad

A ‘typical‘ sniper in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ according to the same ‘through the asshole‘ method is marauder Chvanov – a demon, a moral monster, ‘dirty mouth‘, man-lizard. Many viewers realize very late that ‘sniper’ Chvanov has been at the forefront for several days but could not shoot any fascist - he killed only the fallen girl Masha. There are many scenes in which he leads an eye on the German positions examining a machine-gunner in the nest, a few Germans near destroyed self-propelled gun, but never shoots. Film ‘Stalingrad’s’ ideologists entrusted his ‘dirty mouth’ a special role in the mockery of snipers. Mocking sophistication ‘decorated ‘a few episodes. When he is examining the German positions, his singsong begins to sound, he is speaking with himself, ‘Nobody can escape from Chvanov, and nothing can hide from Chvanov.’ In another episode, he sings, ‘Hey, hit, rifle, accurately, cleverly...’ in an attempt to spoil a good song, ‘Vintovka‘; listen to it. But the most abominable episode is when ‘sniper’ Chvanov turns to Katia:

• ‘Gonna learn shooting?.. Or no longer want?‘. Then suddenly follows a put-down, ‘Wonna naughty, wonna bawdy, wonna shoddy, wonna your body. You've been with the Germans here, and you are saying nothing...‘.

The further monolog is very vulgar and the phrase ‘Gonna learn shooting?..‘ from Chvanov’s ‘dirty mouth sounds insulting to the sniper movement in which the most important thing was that the skilled snipers trained other fighters on the initiative ‘from below’, without orders, on a friendly basis. Thanks to fighters’ enthusiasm, the sniper movement took an unprecedented scale, and the command certainly supported it. The order of the Commander of the Stalingrad front dated from the 29-th of October 1942 ‘About the development of the sniper movement and the use of snipers in combat with the enemy‘ said, in particular:

• 1. Create the teams of snipers in all units and organize their training during the fighting.
• 2. Each platoon to have at least 2-3 snipers.
• 3. Snipers actions to be promoted widely, every success in the battle to encourage (source)

The most successful sniper in Stalingrad was Vasily Zaitsev, a Pacific Ocean Fleet’s seaman from the 62-nd Army who eliminated 225 German soldiers and officers including 11 snipers, and among them was a sniper ace, Head of snipers school in Zossen, Standartenfuhrer SS Heinz Thorvald, purposefully sent from Germany to hunt Zaitsev. Many memoirs noted that a serious sniper competition started among the seamen of the 62-nd Army during the Battle of Stalingrad. They shot six thousand Germans, and in Stalingrad all snipers killed ten thousand fascists. This was an outstanding contribution to our victory because they ‘were laying down’ not German chefs at ‘a watering‘ but they lay in wait for the officers, signalers, gunlayers, artillerymen, tank men, machine gunners, i.e. they eliminated Command, destroyed communication systems, disabled skillfully trained soldiers.

Vasily Zaitsev and other snipers have developed special tactics, which were widely spread in the army, that is why our snipers were so successful. For example, for dangerous situations there was established a rule: ‘one position - one shot.’ ‘In search for firing positions Vasily began to walk away from the forefront deeply towards our location, at a distance of up to 1,000 meters away from the German snipers. It was already difficult for them to detect the Soviet rifleman. Fighting with the German snipers alone became increasingly difficult. Then an idea of organizing a group of snipers occurred. Vasily Zaitsev went to the companies, had long conversations with the soldiers selecting the sniper group. Eventually he did 30 people. Studying was right near the front line‘ (source). The same sniper groups have also started to be organized in assault troops.

There is a quote from the German soldier Erich Ott’s last letter dated from January 4, 1943 :

• ‘Russian snipers and anti-tank riflemen are disciples of God, undoubtedly. They lie to wait for us by day and night and never miss. We have assaulted a building for 58 days. In vain... None of us will return to Germany, unless a miracle happens. I no longer believe in miracles. Time’s passed to the Russians’ side.‘

Jeering at Soviet Teenagers and Girls

A ‘typical’ Soviet teenager in the film ‘Stalingrad’ under the influence of the above-mentioned well-known method draws himself up at attention at the sight of a German officer and shouts a Nazi salute ‘Heil Hitler!’. A ‘typical‘ Soviet girl in occupation puts out to a German officer with no resistance, and then falls in love somehow.

That blasphemous image of Stalingrad’s adolescents and young women personally offended many members of the audience. For in the adolescents and girls from the film we see our fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers. We know how they worked hard in place of adults, helped the wounded, prepared food for the soldiers, worked signalers and scouts, participated in hostilities. A lot of adolescents and young women died from Nazis tortures, were shot and hung. Below are some of the memories of Stalingrad residents.

‘When the fighting began on the outskirts of the city of Stalingrad, Sasha Filippov was 16. He came to the Komsomol Committee of Voroshilovsky District and filed an application, ‘I am 17 years old (he added one). I ask District Komsomol Committee to send me to the Red Army to defend my city...’. He was denied because of his age. Then he organized his comrades to collect bottles for Molotov cocktails (incendiary mixture)... Later he crossed the front line and contacted our military unit... and became a scout and was nicknamed ‘a schoolboy ‘...Sasha crossed the front line 12 times. In December 1942, Sasha and Maria Uskova (from our unit) were performing a combat mission... and were captured, tortured... Before his death, he managed to shout, ‘Anyway ours will come and kill you like mad dogs!‘ Sasha was hung on a tree near the school building (now the school N21)... Bryanskaya street on Dar-mountain, where he was born and lived, is named after the young hero-scout. Sasha Filippov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner posthumously for courage and heroism‘.(source)

‘When the bombing started, Zhenya Motorin born and brought up in Stalingrad lost his mother and sister – they were killed. So the fourteen year old teenager had to stay for a time together with the soldiers on the frontline. They tried to evacuate him through the Volga, but failed because of the constant bombing and shelling. Eugene experienced a horrible nightmare when during another bombing a soldier walking beside closed the boy with his body. As a result, the soldier was literally torn with the splinters of a shell but Motorin was alive.... He saw a submachine gun lying close to him. He grabbed it. He heard rifle shots and long bursts of automatic fire nearby. The fighting was going on in a building across the street. A minute later, a continuous burst of machine gun fire struck on the backs of Germans trying to take in the rear of our soldiers. Zhenya rescued our soldiers and became a son of the regiment since then. Later soldiers and officers called the boy ‘Stalingrad’s Gavroche’. Medals ‘For Courage‘, ‘For Military Merit’ appeared on the soldier blouse of the young defender’. (source)

Beschasnova (Radyno) Lyudmila Vladimirovna Recalls:

‘The enemy came to the Don and they had tens of kilometers to Stalingrad. It was difficult for the adults to get over the obstacle... it was hard... Command tried to send children to explore. Six ones were selected in the children's home. We were being prepared for the mission for six days. By albums we learnt the enemy’s technique, uniforms, badges of rank, symbols on the cars and trucks and how to quickly count the number of soldiers in a column (4 people in a row, then a number of rows - it’s a platoon; 4 platoons comprise a company, etc.). Another great value was to see any numbers in a soldier or an officer's notebook on pages 1 and 2, and to keep this all in mind... Of course, the Germans were in no hurry to show their documents. But it was sometimes possible to win Germans’ favour and persuade them to show their Frau and kinder’s photos because it was a weak point of all front-line soldiers. Photos were stored in their service jacket’s pockets near the notebooks. Of course, not all allowed to even open a book but sometimes it worked. Passing the front line was not always very smooth. We were caught, of course, and interrogated‘. (source).

Donorship during the war is another undeservedly forgotten theme. Millions of girls in the home front donated blood for the wounded and, by doing so, they saved millions of lives of our soldiers. Read what I accidentally learnt from my mother when recently began to question her about her life in Balashov after evacuation from Stalingrad (she was telling me this quite casually, among other memories, ‘Germans were bombing, we were working...’):

• ‘We were evacuated from Stalingrad at the end of August, brought to Balashov... Balashov was crowded with the wounded from Stalingrad Front; hospital trains stood at the railway station, which the Germans bombed constantly. All hospitals and schools have turned in hospitals. My sister Valya and I (I was 17, she was 18) as well as all other girls went to donate blood, sometimes every two weeks even though it was not allowed to so often, but we did it because we were healthy, we engaged in sports before the war. Nobody forced us to donate blood but doctors called for doing this. After donating we were fed, given chocolate. Once the direct transfusion was done – I lied next to a wounded and the doctors pumped my blood to him.‘

Jeering at a Symbol of Hunger of Blockaded Leningrad

Propagandists of other valuables decided not to stint themselves of lying about the Battle of Stalingrad and decided to make a circus with one of the symbols of hunger in blockaded Leningrad. Do you remember the scene with the vociferous woman who is brawling with the soldiers as a market woman from the Odessa’s ‘Privoz’, insisting that she has to go to the occupied part of the city? She carries two baskets full of black earth (the Volga banks are sandy and clayey, just a remark). And this woman explains that a barge with grain was bombed and people took the earth mixed with sand on the bank and then tried to extract the burnt grains out of it. Here we would like to stop and say a few words about the falsity of this episode, in which the filmmakers make fun of black earth in baskets that represents a deadly famine during the siege of Leningrad for us. We are talking about a dramatic story associated with Badaevskiye warehouses in Leningrad, which the Nazis bombed on the 8-th and 10-th of September, 1941. The burnt warehouses contained 3 thousand tons of flour and 2.5 tons of sugar. Melted sugar soaked the whole earth around the place. About 1 thousand tons of burnt flour and 900 tons of burnt sugar were processed later at food factories. A. Adamovich and D. Granik write about this in their book ‘Blockade Book‘:

• ‘Tens of tons of this famous sugar, melted by fire, watered from fire hoses, mixed with soil and sand, - we were told about it so much! – were removed over there. These were blocks of sweet black earth; Bezzubov invented a way of rinsing them with water and processing at the candy factory. He had worked as a chief engineer of the factory before the war. Later caramel candy started to be produced from this black curd, which residents of Leningrad continued to dig at this burnt wasteland for a long ‘(A. Adamovich and D. Granin, ‘Blockade Book’, Lenizdat, 2013, p. 52).

This ‘black curd‘ must have saved tens of thousands of lives from starvation in blockaded Leningrad, so it is holy for survivors. Being exhausted during the blockade, moving like shadows, they dragged their baskets of salutary lumps of black sweet earth on the sleds with their last strength. When scandalous brisk woman waving two baskets of earth in her hands, begins to prove her rights before soldiers, it is clear that she is far from hungry fainting. But a basket of earth is a sign of deadly famine, despair, hopelessness, impasse, no chance to find any food. Combination of incongruous things in relation to sacred objects is one of the techniques of the mocking ridicule.

With regard to the plausibility of this episode in Stalingrad, none of memories about Stalingrad mentions earth with sand taken and carried for further extraction of some grain. On the other hand, there are many memories about how burned and half-burnt grain was sought for on the elevator, without sand and earth:

• ‘Hunger tormented us most of all. We survived because I managed to go to elevator several times, find some half-burnt grain and bring it back. We knew Germans could take it away and therefore we buried it at the window, under a bush of wild roses. We spent our ‘stock’ incredibly thriftily and frugally, so that we could not to die of hunger. Sometimes fascists deprived us of this meal, though. They could come in and tell my mother to take the pot out of the oven. Then they demanded her to taste it a little: they might have feared of being poisoned...‘ (I.D. Cheprasov) (source).

Part 4. Lie by omission or paralipsis in Bondarchuk’s Film ‘Stalingrad’

Lie by omission or paralipsis stands for misleading by means of concealment of essential information. It is obviously exists in the film we are reviewing since the most significant information about the Battle of Stalingrad left off-screen or concealed. Such an act could be qualified as burglary of meanings. Burglary implies the misuse of the sacred name ‘Stalingrad’, which the authors of the film use as the skeleton key to our soul. In this section we reveal in general the most significant meanings associated with the battle of Stalingrad.

Scale of Battle of Stalingrad

1. Scale of Battle of Stalingrad is blurred and hidden in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ as if our young, all to a man, know our history, and even a brief sketch of the major milestones of this battle would be redundant for them. Let’s fill this gap:

• ‘The victory of the Soviet troops over Nazi ones at Stalingrad is one of the most glorious pages in the annals of the Great Patriotic War. The Battle of Stalingrad was lasting for 200 days and nights beginning from the 17-th of July 1942 and until the 2-nd of February 1943 with continuously rising tension of forces from both sides… By going to the counter-offensive the Red Army defeated the enemy north-west and south of Stalingrad, surrounded and eliminated a grouping of Nazi troops counting 300,000 soldiers.
• Battle of Stalingrad was the decisive battle of the Second World War, in which Soviet troops won a great victory. This battle marked the beginning of a radical change in the course of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War as a whole. By that moment, the victorious offensive of Nazi troops had ended, and since then their expulsion from the Soviet Union has begun.
• Battle of Stalingrad surpassed all the battles in world history in terms of the duration of fierce fighting, the number of people involved and combat equipment used at the time. It was unfolding on the vast territory of 100,000 square kilometers. At different stages on both sides over 2 million people, up to 2 thousand tanks, more than two thousand aircrafts and up to 26,000 guns took part in it... At Stalingrad the Soviet troops routed five armies: two German, two Romanian and one Italian. Nazi troops lost in killed, wounded and trapped more than 800,000 soldiers and officers...
• Battle of Stalingrad is usually subdivided into two inseparable periods: defensive (from July 17 to November 18, 1942) and offensive (from November 19, 1942 to February 2, 1943)‘. (source).

Note that the main heroes of the film die on the 16-th of November, the next day after Katia’s birthday. And just three days later, on the 19-th of November, 1942, we began our devastating offensive:

• ‘At 7.20 a.m. was issued a command ‘Sirena‘, which began the most powerful artillery preparation. 3,500 rocket launchers ‘Katyusha‘, guns and mortars began to break the defense of Nazi troops. They were firing for one hour to destroy and damage enemy defense and twenty minutes to suppress the troops. Shattering fire caused heavy damage to the enemy and terrified them a lot‘. (source).

Moreover, four days after the beginning of our offensive encirclement of the 2-nd Field Army commanded by F. Paulus was tightened and closed. More than 300 thousand fascists became isolated in the ‘pot‘. Eventually, an elite army of Nazi Germany famous for the victories over the French, the Poles and the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk was destroyed:

• ‘German troops made desperate efforts to prevent the giant pincers of two Soviet fronts from closing up. They redeployed the 24-th and the 16-th Panzer Divisions to the city of Kalach. But this did not save the situation. At 4 p.m. on the 23-d of November units of the 4-th Panzer Corps of Southwestern Front finally broke the resistance of the German fascist troops and joined near the village of Sovetskiy with the units of the 4-th Mechanized Corps of the Stalingrad Front. On the fifth day after the beginning of the counteroffensive, the ring of operational environment around Stalingrad grouping of Wehrmacht has closed‘. (source).

But audience does not even know what great events will follow in a few days. We used to think that Paulus’ army defeat looked like German ‘warriors‘ frozen in winter snows, but everything began in the last days of November 1942. Nobody explained and showed it to us.

2. We want to draw attention to one more fact of the greatest importance that usually remains out of sight and is not discussed. It is a question of resources opposing us in the war. Why do they say that we were at war with the only Germany? Sometimes they add ‘with the Third Reich’. But it was the united Europe we fought against. Fat, skilled workers, engineers, scientists from France, Czech Republic, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Romania, Italy, Bulgaria, Belgium, Croatia, worked hard producing weapons for the Nazis. And we had the elderly, women and children. Were they full and fat?! Or maybe qualified and skilled? Well, the elderly must have been, but not children and women. Nevertheless, we have overpowered.

Have a look at Sweden. Do you think it kept ‘neutrality’? Here is an evidence of its involvement in the military-industrial complex of the third Reich, ‘At the same time the so-called ‘non-interference state‘ can be called conditional because the Sweden leadership mediated in time of armed conflict, namely, they helped Nazi Germany conclude a number of trade and economic agreements for the supply of industrial raw materials and finished products for the war: iron ore, ball bearings, electrical equipment, instruments, cellulose and in some cases, even weapons and equipment‘. (source).

Here follows Denmark, ‘In accordance with the agreement on trade and economic cooperation and the clearing, signed by the Government of Denmark, export to England was forbidden, and delivery of goods to Germany were done on credit which was supposed to be paid off after the war. The country's economy has been completely shifted to Germany, where almost all agricultural products and coal were sold to‘. (source).

Belgium: 500 000 Belgian workers having deported to Germany (we think they were also skilled and qualified) worked against us and for fascists’ victory. ‘In March 1942, the occupation authorities imposed forced labor, from November 1942 on they began to send Belgian workers for work in Germany. These events have caused a rise of anti-German sentiments in Belgium. In February 1943, another 31 thousand of Belgians were sent for labor in Germany. In total, before the liberation of Belgium 500 thousand inhabitants of Belgium had been sent for forced labor in Germany (220 thousands were prisoners of the Belgian army and the citizens of Belgium‘. (source).

And so on.

3. Where was the frontline before our decisive offensive? According to the film, Germans kept the defense on the right bank of the Volga, and Russians attacked from the left one crossing it in several places. But that’s not true! Nothing of the kind. Our troops rested back on the right bank of the Volga, and then there was a famous order ‘Not one step back!’ Have you heard of a sore battle for Mamaev Kurgan? It's located on the right bank of the Volga. Sometimes our positions were merely 300 meters from the Volga but our troops held their ground! Look at the map of the Battle of Stalingrad: it is clarifies the actual situation.

4. Scale of the Battle of Stalingrad and its importance in the defeat of fascism was so great that thousands of settlements, streets, squares, theaters, etc. were named in Europe in honor of Stalingrad. This is a great appreciation of European nations and we must remember this.

• ‘In various European cities many streets, parks, avenues bear a heroic name of Stalingrad in honor of the victory of the Soviet troops at this city. For example, in Paris a square, a subway station and a boulevard are named after ‘Stalingrad’, in Lyon – an antique market, in Brussels – an avenue and a hotel, and in Bologna - a central street of the city. Of course, over the last 20 years a part of geographical objects bearing the name of Stalingrad was renamed. But most European countries cherish the memory of the people who saved the world from the Nazis. Europeans, for the most part, are not ‘rootless creatures’; they don’t demolish the monuments and change the names. Many of them, according to the tourists, yet do not know that the city on the Volga now bears a different name‘. (in more detail).

Strategic Importance the Battle of Stalingrad

What was the point of the Battle of Stalingrad in the strategic plan? Why did the Germans rushed to the Volga? Did they dream about the way to India as the filmmakers romantically told us using German captain Peter Kahn? Or, does anyone think we defended Stalingrad so fiercely just because the city was named after Stalin? This is nonsense. Determined defense of Stalingrad was a strategic necessity. First, Stalingrad was the largest industrial and transportation hub in the southeast of the country. Second, that the Volga was for us more than just a river, and both Germans and us were well aware of that. It was an artery of life. The Volga was a transport corridor linking the industrial areas of the USSR and the Caucasus oil fields located in the Caspian Sea where over 70% of the country's oil was made. If this artery of economic life had been cut, 2/3 of tanks, aircrafts and vehicles would have remained without fuel. Of course, the USSR actively developed oil production during the war in the Volga region, the Urals, Kazakhstan. But let us remember that by summer of 1942 we had completely lost the oilfields in the Caucasus (‘Grozneft’), which had been either in the occupied territory or destroyed; however, it was 7.5% of the country's oil. Therefore, the loss of the Volga and Stalingrad would have entailed tragic consequences for the future of our country, undoubtedly.

Evacuation of the Civilian Population and the Number of Victims

The Internet is filled with myths about the fact that the population of the city was 900,000 at the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad, and only 40,000 left after the defeat of Nazi troops, i.e. it means, 860,000 people were killed! That that bloggers are not surprised with this mythical figure of losses and they mindlessly reprint it, is explained either with their irresponsibility or EGE-education that does not teach to commensurate the parts of the whole and to generally use common sense. In order to be able to evaluate and make a decision what was true and what wasn’t, let’s compare this figure with the number of the dead during the blockade of Leningrad. It was estimated at 900,000 people in Leningrad, and the blockade lasted 871 days from the 8-th of September 1941 to the 27-th of January 1944. In October 1943, the population of Leningrad was 3.3 million people (source). We suppose it makes no sense to explain how brutally Leningrad was bombed and how severe and rampant the starvation was at that time. Before the war Stalingrad population was 400-450,000; another 400-450 thousand people were evacuated and arrived in the city at that period. Duration of fighting in the city of Stalingrad from September 1942 to January 1943 was about 150 days. Now try to figure it out for yourself whether this figure of losses of 860 thousand people may be plausible.

Here are the real figures on the population of Stalingrad in September 1942:

• ‘There were about 100 thousand civilians left in Stalingrad and not evacuated across the Volga for various reasons. The overwhelming majority of the population that had remained in the city, began to live in basements and shelters‘ (source: thanks to blogger Irina fish12a).

It must be remembered that tens of thousands of Stalingrad workers joined the Soviet troops. The rest of the population was evacuated. Online roam myths that Stalin, in order to avoid panic, banned Stalingrad people to evacuate across the Volga. I wish anyone could show at least one document related to this rumour. I can rely only on common sense of my mother’s memories:

• ‘We lived in Voronezh. In June 1942 I finished high school, I was 17 years old. When Germans came to Voronezh, on the 2-nd of July 1942 we were evacuated to Stalingrad. There were two trains: the first one arrived with the staff, the second with the family members. We were driving for a long and arrived at Stalingrad in late July or early August. Loudspeakers aired reports from the front and songs. By mid-August the situation had become more complicated and we had been warned to be ready for evacuation. In late August we were loaded in the first train onto the train ferry and transported under bombardment to the left bank of the Volga. The second train was destroyed by bombing during the crossing, and almost all have perished. Next we headed through Saratov to Balashov (there was a bridge in Saratov where we crossed to the right bank of the Volga) where my sister Valya and I first worked as couriers; then I was hired a secretary-typist.‘

Further information about the railway ferry via the Volga and construction of railway lateral road in 1941-1942 under Stalingrad is here.

Atrocities of Fascism. Carpet Bombing of Stalingrad on the 23-d of August, 1942

As we have already pointed out many times in this review, there is no image of fascism brutish appearance in the film devoted to the battle against fascism. In order to be able to realize all the abominations that the Nazis were doing, we suggest to see a documentary film ‘Ordinary Fascism‘ by Mikhail Romm (1965, 20 million viewers). All the horrors of modern thrillers pale in comparison to those scenes, which are shown there. And there is one page of our history having a lot to do with the Battle of Stalingrad which out of respect for the memory of the victims cannot be quickly scrolled off-screen, as it was done in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’. We are now going to talk about the barbaric bombardment carpet of Stalingrad on the 23-d of August 1942:

• ‘It was a sunny warm day, one of those days in the late summer, which no longer exhaust you with heat like the usual hot summer days, and the sun casts its gentle soft rays on the ground as if saying goodbye to the summer and waiting for autumn that yet does not show its coming. It was the 23-d of August 1942. <... > It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was slowly inclining towards the west. Suddenly the radio announced: the threat of air attack is remaining (the alert had been declared in the morning). Nobody was surprised because the alarm often passed without a single shot. <... > All of a sudden vociferous roar of planes and frequent jarring shots of antiaircraft guns were heard in the air, and having looked toward the setting sun, I saw a multitude of slowly flying aircrafts surrounded by exploding shells.‘ From the memoirs of the great Russian philologist, Academician Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachev who was 12 and survived that terrible day (source).
• ‘On the 23-d of August 1942 over 1,200 German planes saturated Stalingrad. Nazis committed nearly 2,000 sorties. 120 German vultures were shot down but the city turned into a heap of ruins. Civilians were killed, industrial factories destroyed. More than 42 thousand citizens were killed on this truly tragic day for Stalingrad... Not only the earth was burning but also the Volga: burning oil was leaking out of the destroyed reservoirs...‘. Memories of war veteran Anatoly Yakovlevich Tyutyunnikov (source).
• ‘At 4.18 p.m. Moscow time, on the orders of Hitler's command the 4-th Air Force Luftwaffe launched a massive bombardment of the city which caused huge destruction. This day has become the most tragic one in the history of the Battle of Stalingrad. From the 23-d of August on and for the whole following week, German bombers made up to two thousand sorties a day. Stalingrad has become a front-line city‘ (source).
• ‘During the World War II Stalingrad shared the fate of Dresden, Tokyo, Coventry, Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the city was exposed to the devastating German air raid. There were a few raids, but the most terrible bombing occurred on the 23-d of August 1942. On that day, according to historians, Luftwaffe committed two thousand sorties at Stalingrad.‘ The Russian service of BBC (source).

Bombing of Stalingrad in terms of kilotons of the dropped bombs and its consequences exceeds the bombing of Dresden on the 13-th of February 1945, committed by British and American air forces. 4.5 thousand tons of bombs were dropped on Dresden, the losses counted not less than 25,000 inhabitants. During the raid on Stalingrad the fourth Luftwaffe air fleet, which included dive frontline bombers Junkers Ju 88 (2 tons of bombs on board) and bombers Heinkel-111 H- 16 (3 tons of bombs), completed about 2 thousand sorties; thus, we can calculate the mass of bombs dropped on Stalingrad: not less than 5,000 tons. The death toll of Stalingrad is 42 thousand people. Based on this we can refer to the following description of the Dresden bombing in order to be able to imagine how it was like in Stalingrad.

• ‘The bombings were carried out according to practices accepted at that time: first explosive bombs were dropped to destroy roofs and bare wooden structure of buildings, and then incendiary bombs went down, and after them the explosive ones were dropped again to make difficulties for fire services. The bombing resulted in firestorm in which the temperature reached 1,500 C‘ (source).
• ‘Firestorm is an atmospheric phenomenon forming when scattered seats of fires merge into one. Air above it heats up, its density decreases and it rises. The cold air mass comes in its place below from the periphery. This cold air is also heated. Oxygen inflow works as a bellows. Stable centripetal flows appear and begin to involve spirally from the ground to a height of up to five kilometers. Chimney effect occurs. Head of hot air reaches hurricane speeds. Temperature rises up to 1000 C. Everything burns or melts. In this case whatever is nearby, ‘is absorbed and drawn‘ into the fire. And this goes on until whatever can burn is burned‘ (source).

So as a result of using advanced military technology of that time Stalingrad underwent firestorm along with the cities of Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima. The extent of the damage and the number of victims in this case are comparable with the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Is not that the greatest tragedy of our country, which could have been expressed by all modern means of cinematography with all the so-called effects of the presence! However, ‘Stalingrad’s’ filmmakers were too shy to touch this topic.

Conclusion

There is no image of the Battle of Stalingrad in Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’. It looks like we make a film ‘The Wedding of Peter and Maria‘, and never show any groom Peter nor bride Masha in it. And what do they show us then? These are dirty myths, propaganda of the other Russianness’ valuables, a mockery of the army and the people, the seamy side on the background of ‘political correctness’, bloopers on the background of epic music and the most important thing for some members of the audience - 3D IMAX effects and slo-mo. To paraphrase a famous saying, the filmmakers have thrown the baby, but left the dirty water in a glamorous bath. All their excuses are boring because we do not trust them; it is clear that sacred name of ‘Stalingrad’ was cynically exploited there like an advertising brand and people go to that name expecting to see the truth about Stalingrad. Authors of the film partly perverted this truth, partly concealed, as their measure of dignity of the film is a success in the form of cash fees. We have our own measure, though; in our opinion, this film is worth being called subversive, treacherous, lighting the fuse of a bomb under the fortress of our Russianness and letting Alien in.

Dirty mythologizing of history and perversion of our traditional values reached a new level in film ‘Stalingrad’. Justification for euthanasia alone counts for a lot! But there was still ‘brutality‘ of killing a German at ‘a watering‘, mocking images of ‘seaman‘ and ‘sniper‘, etc. This is not just a ‘bloody atrocity‘ of NKVD but the ‘brutality‘ of Soviet troops in general, i.e. it is a question of bestial savagery and brutality of all Russian people. We are led to the conclusion that something is wrong with the social and cultural core of the Russian people, we need to repent and become a sort of ‘universal‘ people and change this core by means of the turn of civilization, thus coming to the other Russianness.

Have you heard of the concept of converted form? In simple terms, it means that the form starts to devour its contents, for example, rather than developing education the Ministry of Education eliminates it. So does in here: rather than explaining the meanings of the Battle of Stalingrad, Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ devours them. It would be interesting to measure the degree of inversion of the film. The questionable scenes we’ve considered have a total duration of 655 seconds or about 11 minutes. The film itself (without captions) has a duration of 1 hour 58 minutes; so these scenes take only 9.2 % of overall time, and the remaining 90.8% represent quite ordinary sight; but in comparison with the grand scale and real importance of the battle of Stalingrad it is just peanuts and mucus. If you cut the dirty scenes from the film, it will be like extracting a fang out of the snake’s mouth, but what’s left then? Do you remember a wonderful image of evil coming out in the film ‘Green Mile‘? After a black righteous man John Coffey had pulled evil spirits out of a moral monster Percy Wetmore, the latter became just mucus, subhuman. So does Bondarchuk’s film ‘Stalingrad’ in reality: it is just mucus in glamorous wrapping of 3D IMAX full of Alien’s evil spirits.

Andrey Makachev

November 18, 2013

Appendices

Courage

• Anna Akhmatova, February 23, 1942
• 
• We know what trembles on the scales,
• and what we must steel ourselves to face.
• The bravest hour strikes on our clocks:
• may courage not abandon us!
• 
• Let bullets kill us--we are not afraid,
• nor are we bitter, though our housetops fall.
• We will preserve you, Russian speech,
• from servitude in foreign chains,
• keep you alive, great Russian word,
• fit for the songs of our children's children,
• pure on their tongues, and free.
• Forever.

In Stalingrad

• Olga Berggolts, 1952
• 
• The ancient ashes are here so hot
• That they can burn you, if you breathe or touch it or recall
• But when you step it, merely don’t cry
• And do not dread the ashes yet to come

Nobody is Forgotten, Nothing is Forgotten

• Olga Berggolts, 1960
• 
• We are unable to list down all their noble names,
• For there are so many of them are under the eternal protection of granite.
• But paying heed to these stones you must know
• Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.
• 
• Piskarevskoye Cemetery, St. Petersburg

Kill him

• Konstantin Simonov, july 1942
• 
• Listen performed by K. Simonov
• 
• If your house means a thing to you
• Where you first dreamed your Russian dreams
• In your swinging cradle, afloat
• Beneath the log ceiling beams.
• If your house means a thing to you
• With its stove, corners, walls and floors
• Worn smooth by the footsteps of three
• Generations of ancestors.
• 
• If your small garden means a thing:
• With its May blooms and bees humming low,
• With its table your grandfather built
• Neath the linden - a century ago.
• If you don't want a Fascist to tread
• The floor in your house and chance
• To sit in your ancestors' place
• And destroy your yard's trees and plants
• 
• If your mother is dear to you
• And the breast that gave you suck
• Which hasn't had milk for years
• But is now where you put your cheek;
• If you cannot stand the thought
• Of a Fascist's doing her harm.
• Beating her furrowed face
• With her braids wound round his arm.
• And those hands which carried you
• To your cradle washing instead
• A Fascist's dirty clothes
• Or making him his bed.
• 
• If you haven't forgotten your father
• Who tossed you and teased your toes,
• Who was a good soldier, who vanished
• In the high Carpathian snows,
• Who died for your motherland's fate,
• For each Don and each Volga wave,
• If you don't want him in his sleeping
• To turn over in his grave,
• When a Fascist tears his soldier picture
• With crosses from its place
• And before your own mother's eyes
• Stamps hobnailed boots on his face.]
• 
• If you don't want to give away
• Her you walked with and didn't touch,
• Her you didn't dare even to kiss
• For a long time - you loved her so much,
• And the Fascists cornering her
• And taking her alive by force,
• Crucifying her - three of them
• Naked, on the floor; with coarse
• Moans, hate, and blood, -
• Those dogs taking advantage of
• All you sacredly preserved
• With your strong, male love.
• 
• If you don't want to give away
• To a Fascist with his black gun
• Your house, your mother, your wife
• All that's yours as a native son
• No: No one will save your land
• If you don't save it from the worst.
• No: No one will kill this foe,
• If you don't kill him first.
• 
• And until you have killed him, don't
• Talk about your love - and
• Call the house where you lived your home
• Or the land where you grew up your land.
• 
• If your brother killed a Fascist,
• If your neighbor killed one too,
• It's your brother's and neighbor's vengeance,
• And it's no revenge for you.
• You can't sit behind another
• Letting him fire your shot.
• If your brother kills a Fascist,
• Hes a soldier; you are not.
• 
• So kill that Fascist so he
• Will lie on the ground's backbone,
• So the funeral wailing will be
• In his house, not in your own.
• He wanted it so It's his guilt
• Let his house burn up, and his life.
• Let his woman become a widow;
• Don't let it be your wife.
• Don't let your mother tire from tears;
• Let the one who bore him bear the pain.
• Don't let it be yours, but his
• Family who will wait in vain.
• 
• So kill at least one of them
• And as soon as you can. Still
• Each one you chance to see!
• Kill him! Kill him! Kill!