When visiting me sometime in June, Maria asked me skittishly: ‘Tell me, could you ever hate me?’
‘Why would I have reason to hate you?’
‘Just tell me if you could.’
‘It depends on the reason.’
She shoved a written order into my hand: ‘Sergeant Maltseva is transferred to the command of 1st Battalion Commander Bryukhov for the duration of her service.’
‘Vasya, you did tell me once that when you became a battalion commander you would transfer me to your unit.’
‘That’s right. But now our relationships will diverge along different lines: I will give you orders and you will have to carry them out!’ I said, infuriated.
‘Are you joking again?’
‘I’m certainly not joking.’
I rang up the brigade personnel officer later: ‘What did you commandeer her to me for?’
‘She said you’d asked for it yourself.’
‘Why didn’t you ring me up first? You should have contacted me and asked me. Listen, do what you want but she’s not gonna be in my unit!’
He called her up again, rescinded the order and returned her to the anti-aircraft machine-gun company. And that was how we parted. I found out some time later that she’d been demobilized and left for somewhere in the Moscow Oblast. She had left without saying anything to me. After the war she didn’t come to any of the brigade reunions, and in the late 1970s someone told me that she had passed away. Rest in peace, Masha.
Soon we were transferred to Mering. I lodged in a house of a well-to-do Bavarian farmer. It was a two-storey house: bedrooms on the first floor, a large kitchen and dining room downstairs, with a cowshed and a piggery next door; the man also bred hens. He had twenty cows, about fifteen pigs and the whole business was run by him and his wife and two daughters, just 17 and 19 years old. During the war this farmer had had POW workers but after the arrival of our troops they had left, taking food with them.
I have to say that I was amazed by the way that the work at the farm was organized. For the first time in my life I saw a milking unit – something that would not appear in our homeland for another fifteen years. There was a pipeline for the milk, a separator, a churn and a fridge. These people were a whole generation ahead of us in terms of technology – something that was clear not only to me but to the other soldiers, who were also guys from the country. Initially we ran no drilling or classes, so our guys had plenty of time to themselves. They would walk around the place, watching and learning, drawing sketches of things, and working out what could work back on their own farms at home. Of course there was also an element of jealousy and some of them must have started to doubt the fairness of our own social system. The counter propaganda ran along the lines that ‘we had been busy readying for war and hadn’t had enough time, etc., etc.’, but the 18 million men who had seen foreign lands and living standards would not be able to see life the same way when they returned after the war.
A ‘trophy fever’ broke out after the end of the war, although the younger troops were often more interested in wine, which was taken from cellars. However, in my battalion there were about forty trophy trucks loaded with goods – textiles, foodstuffs and so on. I had three vehicles for my own personal use – a Ford, an English one and a German car with a diesel engine which I had requisitioned from the farm owner.
Sarkisyan continued to run the 2nd Battalion. From a personal perspective, I thought he was a lousy guy. He had fought in the ranks back in the summer of 1942 and in August that year he had gone missing. He was liberated from captivity in Romania in 1944. He was debriefed, reinstated to his original rank and came back to the brigade as deputy commander of the 3rd Tank Battalion, before becoming commander of the 2nd Battalion. Sarkisyan wouldn’t talk much about his time in captivity, but ten years later, when he had risen to become a lieutenant-colonel and a deputy regiment commander, he was arrested and put on trial: he was given ten or twenty years in jail for collaboration with the Germans.
I was told later by Chunikhin that Sarkisyan used to come to him to complain about me time and again: ‘You keep praising Bryukhov but he also has vehicles – ones he’s stolen!’
So he tried – but I hid them every time in different places, and no one could find them. Sarkisyan kept reporting me. The combrig replied: ‘Why do you keep lying about Bryukhov having vehicles, you son of a bitch? He’s got none!’
‘He does, but he keeps re-hiding them somewhere!’
About two months after the end of the war I decided to build a permanent settlement for the battalion. I chose a location 3 kilo metres away from Mering, gathered a group of former carpenters and cabinetmakers and set the task for them. I swapped a significant part of the food supplies I had with the Germans for construction materials, beds, linen and blankets.
The construction of the township was completed fairly quickly. There were barracks for each platoon, ‘Lenin’s Room’68 looking like a Kremlin tower, and other buildings constructed from wood. When the combrig came and viewed everything he then used it as the example for all other battalion commanders. When the township was ready the battalion made a 3-kilometre march to the new premises. The head of the brigade’s political department, Negrul, also took part. We got into our machines, and the farmer’s wife and both of her daughters came out to see us off (the farmer stayed inside). The wife was in tears and couldn’t stop weeping. The commissar asked: ‘Why is she crying?’
I didn’t have an answer, but Vasya Selifanov said: ‘Comrade colonel, obviously she is sorry to see us leaving.’
Negrul was amazed by this – only yesterday we were mortal enemies, and now we’d got to know each other so well that there were tears on our parting! Later on he would talk at conferences about the relationships with the locals and how they should be built ‘the way that Bryukhov had managed’: ‘He was leaving, and the hostess was in tears – she was so upset by it all.’
However, once we were settled in our new place, I asked Vasya to tell me the truth: ‘Listen, tell me, why was she really in tears?’
‘Comrade combat, it was simply that I’d just stolen her baking trays!’
As a final word on the subject of trophies, Combrig Chunikhin himself once said to me: ‘Vasya, let me borrow your Chief-of-Staff Sasha Chashegorov for a while. My wife and two children are now near Moscow. I want him to visit them, and if I get permission, he can bring them back here.’
‘Sure, let him go,’ I replied.
Later, the driver told me that his vehicle had been loaded with expensive tableware, cutlery and furniture. He had found the combrig’s house, they unloaded the vehicle, and then sold everything off and returned. And this was happening at brigade level – what could you say when it involved officers of higher ranks?
Around this time we received an order to summarize the whole combat history of the brigade. The head of the corps political department, Sheleg, was present at the meeting dedicated to this matter. The Chief-of-Staff Lieutenant-Colonel Dudin was the speaker. He had prepared a good report, and talked about the history of the brigade from its formation in 1942 in Moscow up until the end of the war. At the end, when the losses from both sides were being added up, he cracked a joke: ‘Had I derived data on enemy losses from the dispatches of our respected battalion commanders Bryukhov, Sarkisyan, Otroshenkov and Moskovichenko, we would have concluded that the brigade had destroyed no less than a half of the German Army. Therefore I had to divide their figures by two before sending them to the corps. I hope the same was done up there.’
Of course the figures we used to report had been cooked up. Only destroyed tanks had been counted more or less correctly – starting from the end of 1943 up until the beginning of 1945 they had been accounted for properly. After the meeting I was ordered to organize studies throughout the battalion and give the troops a day to depict their most memorable combat episodes. Everyone was given paper and pencil, and everyone sat writing all day long. I wrote my piece and handed it over; other officers did the same. Later in the evening, infantrymen and sergeants who had been in battle with me came over to me one by one to ask if I could write something for them as well: ‘I fought beside you – everything you wrote down, write it for me too.’ Later we collected all these notes and passed them on to the brigade HQ. Unfortunately I don’t know where they ended up.
In July 1945 I finally went home on vacation. I ordered my quartermaster, Vasya Selifanov, to select six lengths of dress material – one for each of my sisters. He found material of various colours, selected lengths of 1.5 metres each, guessing that my sisters were as small as me – although in fact they were a litte more buxom, each of them being 80–100 kilos. Of course, nowadays that would have been enough material to make complete dresses, but back then it was mandatory to cover the knees, so these lengths were sufficient for blouses only.
We arrived at the Vienna train station. There were no departing trains and lots of people: all the men from the 3rd Ukrainian Front were awaiting transportation – some for vacation, some had been demobbed, and some were going on to further assignments. It was like a gypsy camp. Petro shouldered a pig’s leg, and we carried a demijohn of wine together. Having spent the whole day at the station, however, we realised that there was no chance to depart, and we left the station to stay overnight with a couple of tarts. By that time shortages of food had began to occur in the city, and although the USSR was providing food aid, it was impossible to feed everyone. Hunger drove girls to earn a living however they could, and there were always plenty of them around military camps.
We demolished half the bottle during the night, but we didn’t start on the pig leg – we ate the perishable food first. Next morning the girls helped us get back to the station, and we found out that a freight train was about to head off to Budapest. The Slavs rushed to storm the freight cars – there were scenes just like in the movies about post-revolutionary times which showed people besieging trains. We barely managed to get on ourselves, but then the train wouldn’t go. Some rather enthusiastic airmen shoved a pistol under the engine driver’s nose and he understood that it would be better not to mess around, so he tied the cars on and headed off.
The situation in Hungary’s capital wasn’t any better: people had been sitting at the station for several days in a row without any hope of departing – there was no timetable and no trains. We perched ourselves in a corner and finished off the wine – at least now we wouldn’t have to drag the bottle around with us – and then we heard a rumour passing round that on the other side of the Danube there was a freight train about to head off to Bucharest. The whole mass of people rose up as one and rushed across the river over a blast-damaged bridge (with only a temporary log decking). Thank God we’d finished the bottle – there was nothing to carry! We managed to get on the freight train, but again there was no movement. Well, now we knew how to handle this situation – a pistol under the driver’s nose and off we went.
Electric trains called ‘Rapid’ ran from Bucharest to the border station at Chop. We missed several of them as we there was no room on any of them, but they began to run more often, and we finally reached Chop safely. We were greeted by fellow soldiers – Mother Russia! Familiar faces and familiar language, it was a pleasant scene! Soldiers headed straight away for food stalls in the station square, where snacks were plentiful, and a lot of vodka was purchased as well. Having got hold of tickets, we then fought our way onto a passenger train to Kiev.
Off we went, and what a feast began! We drank to everything: ‘To victory!’, ‘To the airmen!’, ‘To the tankmen!’, ‘To the infantry!’ We were all young chaps, hardly anyone was over 30. There were mostly officers on board, many of whom were highly decorated. The train was in full swing by the evening.
In one of the compartments there was an airman – a colonel about 30 years of age with his girlfriend. At one point there was a heated discussion about who had contributed more to the victory. Of course there was wild disagreement. The colonel pulled out his pistol, but his girlfriend grabbed hold of his hand, trying to restrain him. He yelled at her: ‘You bitch!’ and grasping her by her hair, began to hit her. Several blokes jumped up, shouting: ‘You scumbag, how dare you treat a woman like that!’ – and a brawl broke out. More airmen rushed to the scene to help their man, more pistols were produced and shooting started. Finally five airmen were tied up and thrown out onto the platform at the next station. By the end of the night everyone was exhausted and fell asleep.
In Kiev, however, there was a welcoming party waiting – the station platform was cordoned off with soldiers from the commandant’s office, rifles at the ready. Apparently someone had already informed them that a ‘merry train’ was about to arrive. We ran to the booking office to get tickets to Moscow but there were none available. We found the stationmaster, but he just said: ‘Wait for the next one, we’ll fit you all on that.’ But a Russian man will always be a Russian man – if there is a train going his way, he will make sure he’s on it! Another train embarking passengers was spotted on one of the other platforms. Those with tickets were queuing and embarking in an orderly fashion. The rest of us ran over, smashed one of the carriage windows and climbed in; the windows of adjacent compartments quickly followed, and all of the windows ended up being smashed. There was a huge commotion and a lot of shouting and noise. The train was delayed for three hours, but eventually it set off.
The conductor was complaining: ‘I will have to pay for the smashed glass!’
I replied: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll work something out now.’ I yelled up and down the carriage, as my voice was one of the loudest: ‘Guys! We need to pay the conductor for the smashed windows!’ and then went around with my upturned cap. I collected the money and brought to him: ‘Take it! There should be enough for the glass and some for your troubles!’ Having partied again pretty well, everyone slept – this time without a punch-up – although the train was running at full speed, and gusts of cold wind blasted through the smashed windows. In Moscow there was another welcoming party: the train was cordoned off and everyone was checked.
I stayed in the city for a week. Petro left for the Altay province to see his kinfolk, and I sent Nikolka home. I had my own stuff to do, and I didn’t bother to write down his address – I would never see him again.
I returned to the brigade in the middle of September. During my absence it had relocated to Bruck, located about 40 kilometres from Vienna. The battalion was now billeted in a barracks, and the tanks stood in covered concrete boxes. Routine army life, full of drilling and studying, began again in earnest.
In the autumn of 1946 the corps was withdrawn to the Motherland. We got the chance to take our trophies back with us. I took with me two vehicles, a motorcycle, a good bed, a marble tabletop, two leather armchairs, a mirror in an openwork frame, a couple of crates of china and a feather bed. We had a lot of fun on the road back as there was plenty of wine and food.
The battalion was now stationed in the town of Gaisin near Vinnitsa. Petro quickly found me a room to lodge at a place owned by a Jewish man, close to the town. Generally speaking, the town was not at all ready to support such a large number of troops. Before the war a cavalry regiment had been stationed there, though now only the walls remained from the barracks.
It was impossible to procure construction materials: we struggled to even find planks, and boarded up every second window, stuffing them with straw. The boiler unit was barely capable of heating the kitchen and the first-aid station, and could only warm up the barracks for two to three hours at night, so the batteries were only slightly warm. So when the cold season started it became impossible to sleep in the barracks. The soldiers would lie on one mattress and use another as a cover, throwing trench coats and blankets on top of it to try to warm themselves up a bit. How was it possible in those conditions to demand full concentration and strength from the men during training in the day?
I was aware that the corps was being disbanded and so no one was going to equip the barracks for us, but something had to be done to stop the men from getting despondent. I decided to show them through personal example how to cope with the difficulties and ordered that my bed should also be set up in the barracks. After the evening roll-call I would go into the barracks with the soldiers, openly undress myself down to my underwear and lay on the bed, covering myself with only one woollen blanket. Of course, I couldn’t sleep because of the cold and would be turning over all night long. At morning reveille I dashed out with the sergeants for the morning exercises. Once we were outdoors, I would rub my torso with snow – I would act as though I was warm and run the exercises after that. Of course, I was cheating – after breakfast I would leave the Chief-of-Staff to run the training and would go home for a sleep. This was my method of maintaining discipline during the week or two when it was most frosty.
There were forty-eight officers in the battalion, and only the zampolit and the Chief-of-Staff were married; the rest were single blokes. Over that half of the year that we were stationed there, half of them, if not more, got married. But no matter how hotly the local girls chased me, I didn’t succumb myself. Weddings were celebrated lavishly, and in spite of general food shortages tables were normally loaded with good cheer. As the battalion commander, I was a guest at most of the weddings – predominantly because my orderly had learned how to play the accordion, which had been my gift to him, and he was pretty much the only musician at all wedding feasts.
In April, after the battalion was disbanded, I was commandeered to work at the disposal of the head of the army’s personnel department. Leaving Gaisin, I sold off my car and left my landlord my wardrobe and the two crates of china, which I had never opened. The man had been persistently beseeching me to leave him all this stuff – I did it under one condition: that he would provide food and drink to all our officers who were departing in all directions. Apart from that, I also left him my motorcycle and instructions so that he could sell it and send me the money. But I never saw any money. Some time later I asked a female acquaintance to go and see him and find out the fate of my motorcycle; she wrote back that she had done so, but he said that the motorbike had been stolen. To hell with it!
I hung about in reserve for about a month, drinking with my mates using the proceeds from selling the car. Soon the commission on preliminary assessment, which reviewed applications for admission into the Academy of Armoured and Mechanized Forces, sent through the necessary paperwork. I sent in my application and went on to pass the examinations in Russian language and mathematics pretty well. The army commander Pukhov69 signed my application, but in June the head of the personnel department summoned me and told me the commander was searching for an aide-de-camp for himself. I bluntly refused, having declared that this position was not for me; apart from that, I had already submitted my papers to the academy.
Apparently he reported this to the commander, as the latter summoned me for a conversation: ‘You know what, Captain? I am about to head off to inspect the troops. I have no aide-de-camp, which is why you’ll be going with me. You can have a look at the troops – it might come in handy. After that, if you want to, you can stay as my aide-de-camp, as I know you are a good man – if not, you can join the academy.’
I have to say that Pukhov – a gentleman by birth – was the only army commander I met throughout the whole war who was not a member of the Communist Party. He made a good impression and it was a pleasure to serve with him.
During the inspection trip, I deliberately behaved as though I didn’t want to take this position, as it was more suited to a younger man – I never helped him on with his trench coat, never opened a car door for him and was always the last to get into a car.
Two weeks flew by quickly. Having returned, the commander summoned me once more: ‘Well, Bryukhov, have you changed your mind?’
‘Comrade commander, I haven’t. I’m certain that I want to study and further my career as a commander.’
Studying in the academy proceeded well, though it proved to be difficult at times. There were 126 men in our year. The atmosphere was very friendly: as war veterans, everyone still maintained the feeling of frontline camaraderie, mutual support and respect. None of us boasted about our decorations, and there was no ratting on each other or grovelling. Later life would go on to show that out of these 126 men, one was to become a marshal,70 with four lieutenant-generals and six major-generals.
I enjoyed great prestige amongst the other guys as I was the captain of the academy ski team, running the military school championship of the Moscow Military District – although I wasn’t particularly worried about winning these competitions since I had disliked them since childhood.
After graduation everyone departed for different military districts and army groups. I was really unlucky: I was appointed to the Soviet occupation forces group in Germany as a senior officer in the HQ operations department of the 3rd Mechanized Army.
Soon I became 26th Tank Regiment commander. I took over the regiment with a keen desire to whip it into shape – what was the best way to do this? It needed to be organized in accordance with regulations, and to do this precise daily training had to be worked out. In the Russian Army daily routines had been pretty much the same almost from Suvorov’s times – the same reveille, physical exercises, morning roll-call, guard mounting and drilling. Everything is scheduled very tightly, but that meant that there was no time in the normal routine to line up and march from the barracks to the dry mess, or have a look at the maintenance of the equipment. In the past there was only one weapon – the rifle – and one hour was enough to clean it up and put it back on the rack. But in our regiment we had tanks parked 1 kilometre away from the barracks. So that meant extra time was needed to form the men into a column, time to march them to the depot and more time to open the facilities – where was the time to train? There was none! It was to take me a long time to adapt this schedule to modern conditions.
Over the period of a year I implemented the following rule: roll-calls were now conducted at each of eighteen muster points prescribed in the regulations. Under such conditions there was never a single thought in a soldier’s mind to go AWOL. I introduced monthly assessments of how effectively we were carrying out the day routines with the company and battalion commanders. Eventually I was in the position where I knew everything that was happening in my regiment. At the end of 1956, during an evaluation by the Army Military Council, my regiment was noted as the best in the army. Back then companies and battalions sometimes passed evaluation with ‘distinction’, but it was not achieved at regimental level. This might be explained by the fact that to gain a distinction the personnel of a unit had to have no less than 75 per cent marks on all standards, from square-drilling to shooting, and a regiment consisted of 2,000 men and ninety-four tanks – so it required a huge amount of concentrated effort to gain a distinction at that level. But by the spring the regiment received excellent marks in all subjects.
Thereafter I was assigned as commander of the 59th Guards Motorized Rifles Division stationed in Tiraspol (Moldavia). I had always had a cordial relationship with the head of the district, Commander Babajanyan.71 I reported to him via telephone that I had arrived and assumed office, and asked when I should come for a visit.
‘What’s the point of you coming to see me? Don’t I know you already? I myself will come to see you one day soon.’
It was three months later before he came to see how well I had settled in. The divisional commanders highly respected him: this was one of those rare situations when divisional commanders would invite the district commander to visit them.
I stayed a divisional commander for three years. In 1968 at a sitting of the district military council I was asked about my view on being assigned as corps commander to Simferopol (Crimea). I knew that specific corps very well so there was no point in rejecting it. By the end of the year they telephoned me from the chief human resources department and summoned me to Moscow. I arrived at the department but they wouldn’t tell me anything specific and asked me to go and see the head of General Staff, who would fill me in. I immediately guessed that something wasn’t right. I went to see Marshal Zakharov.72 I had just walked into his office when he said: ‘Well, are you sick too?’
‘No, I seem to be all right,’ I said, taken aback.
‘We have already picked three candidates – generals – for the position of chief military adviser in Yemen, and all of them are sick! These kind of men should be fired! You must take the position instead!’
‘My wife may fail to pass the screening . . . she works in the Committee,’73 I objected.
‘If she doesn’t, you will have to go on your own! I’m not going to run this selection process any longer!’
‘Okay, agreed. One question – what’s the purpose of my mission?’
‘How do I know what your mission is, Bryukhov? Get out there and find out! In principle, I guess it’s to help the Yemen Arab Republic raise an army.’
I have to say that I was very despondent. I had already turned 45, and after two years of this posting I would become too old for a new army assignment. I realized that my dream of becoming a great military leader would never come to fruition.
I spent three months preparing – learning the Arabic language and studying the political situation in the country. At the end of August I flew out to Sana, the capital of Yemen, where I was met by Chief Adviser Maximov, who I was replacing. We had studied together in the academy and knew each other well. He briefed me on the situation. The army of Yemen consisted of ten motorized rifle brigades: two brigades for special operations and eight tank battalions, equipped with the T-34-76 tanks. The most surprising thing was that the tanks were still operable! There were also artillery units, and a small navy, based in Hodeidah and consisting of two landing ships and eight torpedo boats (which we would later use to go fishing). The Yemen Air Force included three squadrons: the first one comprising MIG-17s, the second MIG-15s, and the third An-2s. Each branch of the forces had its own chief commander reporting to the defence minister, who was also the chief commander at the same time. The population of the country consisted of Arabic tribes led by sheikhs, and the military commanders were all sons of the sheikhs, well educated in Europe or the USSR.
There was no uniform in the armed forces. Soldiers were dressed in smocks, slippers called shoops74 and turbans. All were armed with a large dagger (jambiya) and personal firearms – English or American rifles, Soviet PPSh tommy-guns, and sometimes even a grenade-launcher – and they carried all their arms with them at all times. Soldiers slept on floor mats in the barracks. Every man had to buy food for himself using the wages paid by the state, and they cooked food on individual primus stoves.
Over the two years I spent in Yemen as an adviser I managed to introduce canteens into most of the army units, and teach the soldiers to use forks and spoons, as they had eaten only with their hands before that. Beds, blankets and mattresses, sent from the USSR, were introduced into some brigades. I showed them how to make their beds, and the soldiers quickly got used to this and began to maintain order themselves. I spent a lot of time persuading the army commanders to introduce secure rooms for weapons and then stock all the arms there. I managed to introduce a proper uniform. When I ran a parade a year after I had arrived all the infantry brigades wore camouflaged uniforms, boots and berets.
I returned from Yemen in the autumn of 1971. To conclude my assignment, I wrote an analysis of the local military theatre, as well as descriptions of the local environment, waterways and roads, including the weight-bearing capacities of all the bridges. I also depicted the tribes and their inter-relationships. The volume made up 600 pages. I sent it to general HQ, and I have no idea where it ended up. I still regret that I did not take a copy back to Moscow with me.
My homecoming was not easy. It was very hard to get a new assignment. Whereas you could work your way up to the divisional commander level merely through individual effort and abilities, completely different qualities and characteristics came into play at higher levels. Assignments would be made based on kinships, connections and even on personal appearance. I sensed it particularly in a couple of cases: a special assignment as general for the defence minister and another as first deputy of the Kiev Military District commander were closed to me – it was explained to me that my superiors had disliked my small stature. On top of that I wasn’t particularly good at grandstanding. Although I had passed through all my former positions with excellent references, my personality was deemed ‘not flexible enough’. Finally I was appointed as a deputy army commander of the 5th Red Banner Combined Army to Ussuriysk.75 It was a big army – 60,000 men – more than in the whole Kiev Military District. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel any desire to be in overall charge of an army, although shortly after my arrival the commander departed for re-training and I had to assume full command for three months. Throughout my thirty-one years of service, I had always wanted to move forwards, looking forward to the next higher rank and a new assignment, but now I was becoming wiser and less ambitious.
Once I started to inspect units, I came across problems. The army camps were well-built but in a neglected condition. Training was done in a formal way but at a very low level. Officers were working out the last years of their time, and those who had longer to go until retirement were more concerned about getting out of this place. It was hard to make such commanders accountable and to get any results out of them. This was the outcome of a poorly thought-out approach to the fates of these people. Officers in the Far East, Siberia and Transbaikalia regions had served in these territories for dozens of years without being replaced – they had practically no chance of being transferred to the inner territories or abroad. And the climatic conditions here were very harsh. On top of all that, the cost of living here was higher as the prices for everything were higher than in mid-Russia. Conversely, officers in the interior regions lived in reasonable climatic conditions, were provided with apartments, served in smaller units, had been abroad at least once and, when on foreign assignment, were able to buy goods that were unavailable back home. Such officers naturally held on to their positions, awaiting retirement.
But in both cases many officers related to the service quite formally: they performed duties automatically but it was difficult to motivate them and improve the quality of training. District commanders held back top-class personnel, and finding a fat office and getting a profitable mission abroad had become the main incentive of most servicemen. Any sense of duty had evaporated, and that was why the discipline in the army was in such a disastrous state.
I travelled around the various military stations, carrying out detailed inspections, but time and again just found the same things – indifference, nonchalance and outrageous passiveness across the whole officer corps. There were a lot of orders being carried out but their implementation was well below standard and there was no control. Once the division and regiment commanders had lost their drive, superior officers could do nothing. I liked the fact that I had a large number of troops: I wanted to improve them, to show them and train them but I kept knocking my head against the wall in vain. I was implementing measures – using methods of reasoning, demonstrating, demanding, and even breaking – but there was no improvement. The level of square-drilling was ordinary at best. Infringements of statutory regulations were frequent: formation discipline was non-existent; the appearance of officers and warrant officers was slovenly – uncut hair, worn-out belts and battered jackboots. Officers had become casual, almost foppish, and that military bearing which used to differentiate military people from civilians had disappeared. Everyone wore old uniforms, waiting for a new issue.
Nevertheless, by the end of the year, and with a great deal of effort, I had managed to reverse the situation and ran company-level live-ammo tactical exercises in front of the military district commander, General Petrov, with excellent marks. A tank regiment inspection with exercises in Lipovtsy was also finished with excellent marks.
I have to admit that during that period of time I began to think about the general situation of my life more often. Everything used to be so clear for me: I used to believe sincerely and with conviction about the bright future – about Communism. I saw how we could build that bright future. I could identify which steps needed to be taken and which results would be reached; I could describe the future social order. I clearly saw a distinct line between the two phases – Socialism and Communism. As a kid I had enjoyed the improvements in our lives, the disappearance of the differences between urban and country life. But in the end these innovations actually only highlighted the old problems, rather than eliminating them, and made them more complicated. Gradually I became more confused about the whole situation. Increasingly, things were becoming less clear to me, and my unquestioning faith began to falter. Seeing the way that the leaders lived – feeling that you were getting drawn into a whirlwind pursuit of comfort, money and glory – I began to realise that we were not going to put these Communist concepts into practice.
In June 1973, during my vacation in Archangelskoye,76 I was summoned to the human resources department. General-Colonel Ivan Nikolayevich Shkadov had become its head by that time. After a brief conversation Shkadov switched to the reason for his invitation: ‘The head of the department retires soon. How would you feel if we offered you this position?’ He looked at me quizzically.
I had not expected such a twist in the conversation: ‘This proposal is rather sudden for me. I’ve never worked in human resources.’
‘Any man can do what another one has done. I had never done this before I had to, and now it’s business as usual.’
‘In principle I agree then, all the more so since you have so much confidence in me.’
Then Shkadov went into more detail about the specifics and challenges involved in this kind of work and added at the end: ‘This was a confidential discussion. If the assignment occurs, we won’t summon you again but will simply confine ourselves to a phone conversation,’ and with these words he came out from behind his desk, shook my hand and wished me a good holiday.
In August my next assignment took place, but not as the head of the section – that position was taken by General Yazov – but as his deputy. I handed over my existing duties and headed to Moscow, to the final role of my military service – my twentieth assignment. The section was involved in the selection of personnel for all positions across the armed forces (apart from the navy and the strategic-missile troops) and the whole central executive. I was to take over the position as head of the section only eight months later and stay in that role for thirteen years.
I retired in 1986, having decided to leave of my own volition. I was almost 62 years old and I had come to feel ashamed of my age. Shkadov, who already was over 70, had ceased to conduct the mandatory conversations with generals before pensioning them off, and had charged me with this task. So I would end up talking to a general who was 55, and I would have to say: ‘It’s your time to leave, because of your age.’ He would stare at me, and there would be the question in his eyes: ‘What about you?’
So I served in the army for almost forty-five years all told: from 1941 until 1986. I set off on my war path at the Kursk Salient, fought my way through the Ukraine, Moldavia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria. We were opposed by an experienced, exceptionally skilful, courageous and brutal foe. We had to pay a very high price for every destroyed enemy tank, assault gun and cannon, as well as for each and every kilometre of this road. We won that bloody battle, finishing it in Germany and Austria, but so many of my battle comrades had made the ultimate sacrifice for victory. They were young, brave, handsome blokes and each of them had a family, hopes for a better future and faith in life. We have so much to be proud of: we were equal to the best army in the world and finally we smashed it. During the war my crew and I destroyed twenty-eight enemy tanks and killed hundreds of enemy soldiers. And I stayed alive.
I have no regrets whatsoever about the past. I’ve done a lot – I lived my life to the full. I am not ashamed of what I’ve done – I’ve given everything I had. No regrets at all!