Mikhail Viktorovich Shilovskiy,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“We All Together, as We Could, Helped the Front…”: – Book Review: Fedorov I.G. Deti v Proze Voyny – Eto My: Vospominaniya Divnogortsev [Children in the Prose of War – It’s Us: Memories of the Divnogorsk Residents]. Krasnoyarsk, Papirus, 2020. 320 p., ill.
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-1-19
The article presents a review of the collection of memoirs compiled by I.G. Fedorov who interviewed 75 residents of Divnogorsk – small town in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. They are members of the public organization “Children of War”, born in 1928–1945. All of them came here during or after the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric power stations in Russia – the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station, which gave rise to the city of Divnogorsk. Today it has about 30 thousand inhabitants. The respondents tried to reflect the most important of their military and post-war impressions and convey their vision of this experience. The information collected in this way recreates the rear everyday life of the war years without retouching and idealization. It can be conditionally divided into two large parts: concerning living conditions and ways of survival in an extreme situation. All respondents report a deterioration in the food situation. In contrast to the period of the First World War of 1914–1918, the population of Russia in 1941–1945 ate worse. The veterans noted the consolidating impact of the school and the educational mission of the teachers. In the memoirs, the attitude of the children to religious holidays is also recorded. Thus, the collection contains information about the children and childhood of that heroic time. This information is interesting in many aspects. Since the authors of the memoirs lived in different parts of the USSR (most of them in Siberia), the information presented by them is a representative database that can be distributed throughout the country in a selected chronological framework. At the beginning of their lives, the children of war went through the trials of hunger, cold, fear and pain. Having overcome them, they managed to maintain optimism and faith in justice. “We had someone to take an example from, we continued the work of the fathers, the work of Victory”, one of the authors notes.
Publishing: 28/02/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 12.10.2020
How to cite: Shilovskiy M.V. “We All Together, as We Could, Helped the Front…”: – Book Review: Fedorov I.G. Deti v Proze Voyny – Eto My: Vospominaniya Divnogortsev [Children in the Prose of War – It’s Us: Memories of the Divnogorsk Residents]. Krasnoyarsk, Papirus, 2020. 320 p., ill. // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 1 (15), pp. 231–238. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-1-19.pdf
Links: Issue 1 2021
Keywords: the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945; Divnogorsk; children of war; memories; occupation; everyday life; food; clothing; shoes; vegetable garden; school