Cartas resgatam a história da resistência russa na Segunda Guerra

O historiador americano Andrew Carroll, autor do best seller War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars, está agora compilando cartas de soldados e civis russos que lutaram contra os nazistas durante a Segunda Guerra. O Moscow Times traz uma reportagem sobre a pesquisa e alguns trechos comoventes mostrando como pessoas comuns enfrentaram aqueles anos difíceis.

<"I hate the Germans more and more every day," one letter reads, from Kovshova to her grandmother. "I eliminated 11 Germans, Mashenka six. Our group of snipers has eliminated 245 Nazis this month. I am so proud of them; after all, they are our students." In another letter, this time to her mother, Kovshova writes how she and Polivanova, armed with shotguns and grenades, went "to hunt for Germans" and picked blueberries in the forest on the way.

Natasha Kovshova tinha 21 anos e morreu ao lado da amiga dela Masha Polivanova em 1942.
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"It's very bad here ... We're hungry here as wolves in winter, and if I had three loaves of bread I would eat them all at once." So wrote seven-year-old Asya in a letter to her relatives during the 900-day siege of Leningrad.
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When I receive your letters, I get excited like a kid," wrote Russian pilot Alexander Kukushkin to his girlfriend Galina in 1944. "You'll say that it's funny when a grown-up man behaves like a child. ... But it's a fact that when people are in love even the most serious ones start looking like babies," he wrote. "I love you and will never forget you," Kukushkin wrote in another letter. "I will do everything possible to stay alive and be together with you."

Kukushkin died in August 1944, but Galina stayed in love with him all her life, Carroll said.

Apesar de mostrar os horrores da guerra, Carrol diz que o projeto não é pacifista.

"It's just a human historical document," he said. "Wars are different, and there are such ones which people just can't avoid, like the one against Hitler. However, when reading those documents, people can make their own conclusions on what wars bring, without any comments (from me)," Carroll said.

IMHO, qualquer coisa que mostre uma visão realista do dia-a-dia da guerra, sem as distorções de Hollywood ou do ufanismo militarista metido a patriótico, é um instrumento pacifista. Como dizem veteranos no Vietnã: "The general gets the glory, The family gets the body, and We get another mission."