WAR AGES LIKE A MAN: THE PASSING YEARS ALTER ITS APPEARANCE, LEAVING ONLY THE MEMORY

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Tatyana Sinitsyna) - Incredible though it is, unburied bones can still be found on World War II battlefields in European Russia.

Colonel Pyotr Dunayev (Retired), war veteran and military historian, says, "War ages like a man: the passing years alter its appearance and the fervor fades away, leaving nothing but the glorious memory." He does not think it matters anymore whether they are the bones of Germans or Russians. "You cannot shame the dead," he quotes from an ancient Russian chronicle, The Saga of Igor's Army. He also recalls the words of the great Russian military leader Alexander Suvorov, " War is not over until the last soldier has been buried." So, from a moral point of view, "the war is not yet over," the veteran reasons.

Long before the 60th anniversary of Victory Day, President Vladimir Putin set the country two serious tasks: firstly, to give all the "lost" military decorations (of which there were more than a million) to the heroes of the war (or to their descendants), and secondly, to give the remains of the fallen honorable burials. To other countries it seems that "Russians do not respect the dead." But this is not true, for there is no nation that would not bow to the Mystery of Death. Much has been done in the sixty years since the end of the war to collect the scattered bones, and it is school and college students who have been leading the way. Various youth "search groups," such as "Young Pathfinders" and "Along the Roads of War" have been making good progress. They have found the remains of many soldiers in forests and marshlands and have dug up bones in places that saw fierce fighting. Fourteen year-old Pyotr Borisov, who took part in the "digs" at the Prokhorovka Field, the site of an unprecedented tank battle, says that his group found bones that had fused with metal.

Pyotr Dunayev believes, "Above all else, all these finds show what a huge toll the war took, and what an incredible price the peoples of the former Soviet Union paid in the struggle against this "brown-shirted" plague of the 20th century. He adds, "Twenty seven million people died in the war and each had about five liters of blood. You do the math!"

Another veteran and military historian, Boris Nevzorov of the Russian Defense Ministry's Institute of Military History, clarifies the figures, "Out of the 27 million dead, slightly over 8 million were soldiers and officers. The rest were civilians." Vera Shuvalova, a 13 year-old schoolgirl from Nizhnevartovsk, wrote in an essay about the 60th anniversary of Victory Day, "Our people have probably never loved their Motherland as sincerely and deeply as they did during the Great Patriotic War. They say that in order to appreciate the value of something, we have to imagine it disappearing. The Nazis wanted to take away our Motherland and so everyone rushed to defend it." Despite her tender years, her words are really quite insightful. Alexander Sitsev, an 83 year-old veteran and Hero of the Soviet Union, said much the same thing. "Throughout the whole war we were literally burning with love for our Motherland. It was this "laser beam" of patriotism that shot down the enemy." Sitsev fought in all the famous battles of the war, which are described in military history textbooks: the battles for Moscow and Stalingrad, the tank battle at Kursk and the Berlin operation.

Alexander Voloshchenko, a veteran who has taken part in all the post-war military parades, clearly remembers the day when his platoon took up combat positions in trenches near the village of Kryukovo, 28 kilometers away from Moscow. The platoon was made up of soldiers aged 18-20 and was commanded by a Junior Lieutenant no older than his men. He recalls, "When we saw the German tanks we gave each other manly hugs and exchanged the words, "For Moscow, for the Motherland!" After the war a moving song was written about this platoon, "Near the village of Kryukovo a platoon perishes..." Soldier Voloshchenko was the only member of the platoon to survive. He has been invited to attend his 60th victory parade on May, 9. He has already put some sedatives in the breast pocket of his uniform, just in case. He is 84 after all.

Boris Nevzorov says that the battle for Moscow (fall-winter, 1941), which stopped the monstrous Nazi blitzkrieg, was not only the greatest battle of World War II, but the greatest battle ever. It was the "turning point" in the war. Western historians do not share this view. They believe that the most decisive battle was the one fought at El Alamein in Egypt, where the 8th British Army crushed the German and Italian forces. But 23 times more men fought in the battle of Moscow than fought at El Alamein. To Hitler's mind, taking Moscow would be tantamount to defeating the whole Soviet nation, and would remove the last obstacle on his road to world supremacy. After Moscow, Hitler had his sights set on the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Lidiya Bulatova, an anti-aircraft gunner during the war, recalls, "When the war started I saw the famous poster in Moscow's main street (today's Tverskaya Street), "The Motherland Calls You!" It was very moving. Thousands of copies of this poster were made in a matter of days and put up in every town and village. My girlfriends and I had just graduated from high school, but we added a few years on to our ages and joined the home guards."

"Women at war - it was the most terrible sight," Pyotr Dunayev admits. "Their delicate hands, slender shoulders and sensitive hearts are not made for war. Yet still, they fought heroically. I am proud to say that I fought at the Kalinin Front in the same regiment as Manshuk Mamedova, a Hero of the Soviet Union. Before the war she had finished second year at the Alma Ata Medical Institute, but she was determined to fight at the front line, gun in hand. I used to tell her, "Take care Manshuk, watch out! The Germans are after you." She would just wave her hand and say, "They won't get me!" But in the end a German bullet did get her. Her heroism has not been forgotten. When I visited Kazakhstan, her homeland, I walked along a street named after her and I saw Mount Manshuk. The Russians also revere the memory of this courageous young woman. A monument to Manshuk was erected in Nevel, which is where she died and now rests. War veterans and children go there to lay flowers."

Pyotr Dunayev talked about when he was stationed at the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan after the war, in the early sixties. When Yury Gagarin made his historic flight into space, Pyotr, a Major at the time, picked a whole bag of steppe tulips and flew to Nevel. Gagarin's mother lived in a village close by. "I left a bouquet of tulips for his mother and scattered the rest over Manshuk's grave. I saw her in my dreams that night. She was clasping the flowers to her bosom."

Moscow-based engineer E. Salamov, an Ossetian, has an amazing story to tell. "My Father went to war of his own free will. He didn't wait for the draft. Without thinking twice, my Mom, Fatima, who was 22 at the time, put me and my sister in a children's home and then followed my Father wherever he went to fight. They were nicknamed "Leila and Medjnun." It seems Fate itself saved my parents. They both returned, though my Father was injured and could not work. I remember how my Mom used to polish their military decorations from time to time, and how proud she was of her medal For Courage. She thought it was her best decoration."

All the veterans agree that the great love that the Soviet people had for their country, and their belief in the righteousness of their cause helped the Soviet Union survive the worst war of the 20th century. "It didn't matter what nationality a person was or what religion they believed in," Colonel Alexander Lebedintsev recalls. "I'm Russian Orthodox but I had a "front-line talisman" attached to a bit of string under my shirt just like my comrades-in-arms did: Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians, Georgians, Yakuts and Adygeis. It looked like a bullet casing and inside there was a bit of paper with your name and unit number on it." The young "Trackers" still come across these military tokens.

An unprecedented discussion about the war is underway on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Victory Day. Many people have been writing about the war with a negative take on events. They have been trying to prove that the war losses were "unjustified" and have accused the victorious military leaders Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky and Vasily Chuikov of using particularly cruel methods. Some have even been trying to discredit their military skill. Moreover, Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) is the only place in the whole country that has agreed to erect a new monument to Stalin designed by Zurab Tsereteli. For the soldiers, Stalin's name was synonymous with the Motherland throughout the war.

Today's young people simply do not know what to make of the different interpretations of this monumental event. In Soviet times, it was hard to get to the facts, as the state made a great show of exalting heroism and praising the Soviet victories, while at the same time failing to mention the military defeats. Mistakes and miscalculations were effectively covered up. In schools the subject of the war has become trite and is of little interest to students. My daughter told me that a boy in her history class once said, "Stalin was a general in Suvorov's Army." The teacher and the rest of the class laughed their heads off."

The younger generation is usually more interested in the question "Why do we, the victors, live in much worse conditions than the defeated nations?" than in the question "Why did we win?" Both are difficult questions, and to attempt to answer them one must draw on the whole of Russian History.

Nonetheless, I decided to put these questions to Alexander Sitsev, who fought in Operation Berlin. He gave the same answer both times, "Who the hell knows! That's Russia for you!" That made us laugh long and hard, and as Sivtsev laughed, his 29 medals, of gold, silver, bronze and enamel, awarded for all his victories in the Second World War, jangled on his chest.