“Evgeny Petrov died as a war correspondent”: on the 80th anniversary of the death of the author of “The Twelve Chairs”
After the start of the Great Patriotic War, many famous journalists and
writers went to the front as war correspondents.
Among the military officers was Evgeny Petrov (Kataev), who at that time was already one of the most popular Soviet writers. Starting from
On June 22, 1941, he constantly went to the front, his essays were published in Pravda, Red Star, and Ogonyok.
In his feuilletons, Petrov often described the everyday life of ordinary soldiers and local residents. For example, on March 29, 1942, he wrote in “Truth»
“…In one village, near Yukhnov, I saw the chairman of a collective farm, who, so to speak, completely defeated the Germans in a somewhat unusual, but very important battle. When the Germans were approaching his village (this was in October), he organized a kind of “branch” of a collective farm in the forest. All supplies of grain, hay and food were transported there. Huge dugouts were dug into which cattle were placed. They even hid pigs and poultry. The chairman himself lived in a forest lodge, where he temporarily
The board of the collective farm was transferred. The Germans did not receive a crumb of food or a straw in the village. The Germans could not turn the head of a single chicken, they could not shoot a single pig in the ear. The chairman waited until the Germans were kicked out, and now everything has been transported back, and the collective farm lives a completely normal life, as if there were no Germans at all. Only in the remaining few huts is it cramped to live…”
In June 1942, Yevgeny Petrov decided to personally visit the besieged Sevastopol. After his death, the military correspondent’s last essay, “Breaking the Blockade,” was published in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper:
“A few days before his untimely death, the writer Yevgeny Petrov went to Sevastopol on the leader “Tashkent”, which broke through
through the ring of the enemy blockade to the besieged city. Returning on the same ship to the coast, Evgeny Petrov began work on an essay about the campaign for “Red Star”. The death at the post interrupted this work. The unfinished manuscript was delivered to Moscow.
The Tashkent leader carried out an operation that will go down in naval textbooks as an example of a daring blockade break. But this operation will not only be included in textbooks. It will forever go down in the people’s memory of the glorious defenders of Sevastopol, as one of the amazing examples of military valor, greatness and beauty of the human spirit.
People knew exactly what they were getting into and did not create any illusions for themselves. “Tashkent” was supposed to break through the German blockade to Sevastopol, unload ammunition, take on board women, children and wounded soldiers and, having broken the blockade again, return to its base … “
(“red star“, July 9, 1942)
Evgeny Petrov died in a plane crash on July 2, 1942 – the plane on which he was returning to Moscow crashed in the Rostov region. There are two versions of what happened: an attack by an enemy fighter and a mistake by the Soviet pilot. Ilya Ehrenburg wrote in those days:
“…Evgeny Petrov was a cheerful person, in love with life. His optimism was fundamental: not by program, but by nature. He wanted life to be even better, to make life easier for people. He spoke about this passionately, getting all fired up. He understood what hindered a person – inertia, philistinism, the bureaucratic case. He fought against these opponents of humanity. He was not a caustic satirist, he did not castigate, but in his
affectionate humor was a force that helped people fight harder and love stronger. Such a person would live and live – he was created for happiness. And he died at a combat post, he died because he loved life, loved his friends, loved his homeland.
“red star“, July 5, 1942.
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