It has been translated for the first time Stalin's sniper, autobiography of Liudmila Pavlichenko, and the Memoirs of a Sniper in Stalingradby Vasili Záitsev, possibly one of the most famous of the Second World War.
And it is that snipers, those invisible soldiers so precise and lethal, usually produce a special fascination in both reality and fiction. The protagonists of those books and their stories were real. And we already know that reality always surpasses fiction. Today I dedicate this article to you.
The snipers and me
«We men like war, Comrade Sukarov, the war, the honor and the glory that death is in charge of distributing with justice and without it ». It is one of the phrases of my last novel that I just took out. I make a minor character, a former Russian revolutionary, say it to the protagonist, Nikolai Sukarov. They are in the Soviet Union from 1944.
I am fond of World War II obviously and that novel was my very modest tribute to the terrible historical episode. And I've always been more interested in the European front, specifically that German invasion of Russia. So I placed, only in reference, not in the narrative itself, to my protagonist in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk. And at Stalingrad it coincided with Khrushchev and, of course, with Vasily Zaitsev, although with the latter he did not find himself because he was invisible, a ghost. Neither with Lyudmila Pavlichenko, even more lethal than Zaitsev but much less known and who was on other fronts.
So I also admit my weakness for them, snipers. In fact, another of the protagonists of my stories is a detective from the 50s who was also a detective on the European front and who tells some experience that another in the first person. In other words, I have wanted to get into that special skin from a vision as distant, alien and ignorant as mine. But that's what literature is for, to get into other skins and sexes, and live other times and other lives. Or imagine them. Y Záitsev and Pavlichenko are two of my references.
Now their stories meet in bookstores And, for fans of the war genre and biographies, they are essential.
Stalin's sniper - Lyudmila Pavlichenko
When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, Liudmila Pavlichenko enlisted in the Soviet Army and asked to be assigned to infantry and wield a rifle. He was first in the Odessa defense and later in the battle of Sevastopol. On those fronts he killed 309 enemies with her rifle, and became the most prominent marksman of the conflict, excelling above his male colleagues like Zaitsev.
Un mortar wounded her in 1942, withdrew from the front and was sent in propaganda missions to Canada and the United States. There he gave several press conferences and was in many political events. She was even housed in the White House and started a good friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. He received the decoration of Heroine of the Soviet Union and continued to serve in the Red Army giving international talks and conferences until 1953.
When the war ended, he was able to finish his History studies that he had parked. It was his war diaries those who helped her write these memoirs. In them he recounted the insecurity and uncertainty of the day to day combat. And also their more personal experiences, like her relationship with Lieutenant Alexei Kitsenko, whom she married. He died at 58 of a heart attack.
Memoirs of a Sniper in Stalingrad - Vasily Zaitsev
Vasily Zaitsev, hunter born in the Urals, he was a shooter out of the ordinary. He also studied accounting and was insurance inspector. In 1937 they called him up and he was like sailor in the Pacific fleet. Then he requested the transfer to a company of riflemen and ended in Stalingrad. There he killed 242 Germans and 11 other enemy shooters. He won numerous decorations, including the Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union.
This now reissued book is the personal account of their experiences in the fight, and in that battle considered the bloodiest in history. But it starts with his childhood, because of how his grandfather, from a long line of hunters from the Urals, gave him his first shotgun. And how did he learn toastrear and stalk killing wolves. Then there are many testimonies about their actions and obviously his view on history is subjective. It also gives many tips for snipers, in fact, he later became an instructor.
The french director Jean-Jacques Annaud took to the movies in 2001 his figure in Enemy at the Gates, starring a soft and too handsome Jude Law. It was a failed version, with a lot of falsification of the original story, but that can be seen out of curiosity and for the careful setting.