Archival stories

"The past winter seems long..."

In September, 1941, right on his birthday, on 17 September, Mikhail Meshcheryakov, a junior lieutenant of the 261st separate machine-gun artillery battalion that at that time was part of the Slutsko-Kolpino fortified area that defended Kolpino, was wounded and went to hospital, where he spent the winter of 1941-1942. The hospital was in besieged Leningrad.

In April, 1942, recovering from the third operation and preparing for discharge, Mikhail wrote a letter to his aunt. Very simple, everyday and at the same time, piercingly touching and lively that unfolds a panorama of the very life of those terrible years.

"18.4.42

Dear aunt!

I am writing this letter from the hospital where I have been lying since the end of November last year. Before that I served in the army; I was wounded. On 31 March, my mother and Panteley's wife left Leningrad for Stalingrad. During the journey, I received one postcard from them, which I learned from that they had safely crossed Lake Ladoga.

I am very worried about my mother: she has become very weak. I am afraid she will not be able to stand the journey. If you receive a letter from them, please, inform them that I am alive and that I had a third operation on my leg on 3 April. I am now almost well. I will be discharged to the active army in a week. As soon as I get to the unit, I will give you my current address that you will forward to my mother and where I should write and inquire about me.

I am writing this to you because we have no one in Leningrad except Panteley and me. My wife and my daughter (I have a daughter Tatiana that turned exactly one year old on 14 April) left Leningrad on 4 April. Where to - I do not know and their address is unknown to me.

This war broke our whole way of life. Everything that we had done for 15 years - all of it perished. Before the war we finally had a good life. Everyone finished their studies. We started earning good money. My mom quit her job and took care of my daughter. Now there's no family, no apartment.

The past winter seems long..."

***

This is the end of the letter. The second piece of yellowed paper has been lost. But we already know what happened to Junior Lieutenant Meshcheryakov next. In May 1942 he was demobilized and urgently sent to Kazan, to the Radium Institute that was evacuated there. And when the war ended, he became the first director of the secret Hydrotechnical Laboratory and one of the founding fathers of JINR.

The winter was long indeed. And the whole way of life, indeed, was destroyed. But human life, snatched in time from the clutches of misfortune and the thought embodied in this life allowed giving birth to a new, big and powerful one and became its foundation, evidencing that any winter can be survived.

The original letter of M.G.Meshcheryakov can be seen at the exhibition that is currently prepared to be held at the Cultural Centre "Mir" in May. Archival materials are kindly provided by the Laboratory of Information Technologies and personally - by Tatiana Strizh.

Anastasia GOLDSTEIN