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Vladimir Baranchikov

© Vladimir Baranchikov, 2023

ISBN 978-5-0060-6249-8

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

In 1926, a new settlement was built on the northern outskirts of Leningrad – ten wooden two-story houses, two rows of five. The houses were lined up perpendicular to Kondratievsky Avenue, stretching from the Arsenal factory to the Theological Cemetery, half an hour’s walk from this last earthly haven. Fields and old buildings of the Polyustrovo district, famous for its delicious spring water, stretched around the village. The springs were located in an open space, fenced only by a low openwork metal grate, and everyone could drink mineral water here and fill a bottle or decanter with a metallic taste healing liquid. My grandfather worked all his life at Arsenal, lived for the first time in barracks on the territory of the factory, and bought an apartment in the Village, as they said then. At each building, residents laid out gardens with fences, each apartment had a small vegetable garden, on which potatoes were usually grown – in general, rural life in the city. The houses had stove heating, gas was carried out in the early 1960s, and a laundry and wood sheds were built for household needs. The village itself survived the blockade with the loss of one house – an artillery shell hit it, and only an empty place violated the correct geometry of the building. Residents were less lucky – many people died, some were evacuated, only my father, who served in aviation, returned alive from the boys-conscripts of the village.

– Always drunk, sleepy and funny

aviation mechanic.

The face is in oil, the nose is in grease —

but in the Air Fleet he is, —

the wife of a fellow soldier, a friend of my father, also a front-line soldier, liked to joke (and had the right to do so) at a traditional meeting with orders at our house on May 9th. That day, and only that day, my father was smoking on the porch with friends, and his blue eyes were young and happy.

During the blockade, the potatoes were not enough for long, and only a working ration remained to maintain strength, and then not for everyone. Grandfather survived, he cooked tyur – bread with water from part of the ration, and this saved him. I was born in the 1950s and I remember that before lunch he would drink gastric juice, and after eating he would sweep all the bread crumbs off the table and put them in his mouth. And Grandma kept a supply of crackers in a pillowcase – just in case…

In the first years after the war, robbers attacked passers-by in the dark, monsters suddenly appearing from behind fences and from doorways in white sheets and scary masks, with glowing lights, paralyzing the will and terrifying with terrible screams. Some villains attached springs to the soles and heels, made huge jumps and frightened the people. At that time, the presence of weapons among ordinary citizens was commonplace, I got a dagger and a finnish knife from those times, and my grandfather handed over the pistol to the police by special decree. Shortly before the end of the war, a gallows was erected on Kalinin Square, near a gray gloomy cube with a colonnade called the Giant cinema, on this working suburb with a crowd of people, on which two high-ranking SS officers who were captured during the lifting of the blockade were strung up. My mother told me that the Leningraders – thin women, old men and young people – stood in silence and watched these strong, sturdy Germans, instinctively fighting for their lives, squirm in a noose.

Our village lived its difficult post-war life, dovecotes began to appear in the kitchen gardens, music from the windows sounded more and more often, especially on holidays. There were always queues for groceries in stores, and there were few shops, they often traded in the yards with piece goods. Kondratievsky market, which is not far from the Giant cinema, helped out. I remembered war veterans, elderly and middle-aged men with stern but smiling faces, hung with orders and medals on worn jackets. Suits were unnecessary for them – they were located on the panel at the entrance, on wheelbarrows with wheel bearings, disabled, without legs. And next to the cap – for penny handouts… The front-line soldiers moved with a metallic whistle, pushing off with both hands from the asphalt with wooden boards with finger handles. Over the years, they became less and less, after five years they completely disappeared, but when I approached the doors of this building, my memory always returned this picture – adult men as tall as a child and sparkling in the sun, ringing medals.

The village was divided by a road into two parts, and as usual, the road was considered by the boys as a border during periods of conflict, when unfriendly actions began – threats from enemy territory, attacks and fights between groups of one-year-olds. In times of peace – volleyball and playing war in the sheds – there was a place to hide! In the evening, half-drunk crowds from boys from ten to sixteen years old sometimes solemnly marched along Kondratievsky Avenue, picking up passers-by and singing dashing songs to the guitar:

– Mom gave birth to Zinochka, bought her a basket,

Grow up my little daughter, grow up free,

Behave yourself decent on Stolichnaya market,

And don’t love the boys without fee…

When approaching oncoming teenagers, the crowd dispersed reluctantly, deliberately pushing into the shoulder and accentuating with a mischievous shout the important meaning of the lines from the song:

– Trousers were cracking, and con… were bursting, – voices were already fading away somewhere in the distance.

The Giant cinema was the hot spot where fights often took place, where punks habitually shook money out of teenagers, so the first appeal was: “Jump!” The change rang in his pockets, and there was something to encroach on and something to share. Therefore, the local jargon was the saying – “on the Giant!”:

– Yesterday, two dudes were shaken on the Giant, —

– On the Giant, Seka tied Shunya…

At events of a regional scale, when there were fights district to district, say, Giant on Okhtinsky, due to the large number of participants, one of the parties turned out their jackets so as not to beat their own. Brushes and brass knuckles were usually used by default, knives were rarely used, they did not participate in the extras. Another thing is in personal showdowns – knives were used, there were consequences and terms for minors, I was under prosecutor’s interrogation for a friend’s knife, the court sentenced him three years, another boy – two, and I was threatened with complicity and darkening of a bright future even when I was at school.

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