I found this travelogue of Danish author Hans Scherfig’s 1950 trip to the USSR. I think it will be of interest to people here so I have translated it. The illustrations are by Scherfig himself.

In this chapter the delegation sails the Volga on a cultural ship and meets an old helmsman who braved constant bombing to ferry supplies during the battle of Stalingrad. Scherfig contrasts the city’s squalid past with its dignified present; new buildings, parks, and vast reforestation projects. Reflecting on the brutal war, Scherfig concludes that the Soviet people are resilient, have much to defend, and do not seek war, but will never be defeated if attacked again.

Travels in the Soviet Union

Table of Contents

Chapter 12

We had asked our hosts in Stalingrad if we could go out sailing on the Volga. They placed an entire ship at our disposal.

It was a small, fast steamer, probably a former naval vessel. Now it functioned as a cultural ship. Every port in the Soviet Union has its cultural ship, serving the crews of the cargo ships with books, films, and three like. The cultural ship carries a well-stocked library, collections of gramophone records and sheet music, film projectors, and it conveys lecturers and artists.

Life along the river has changed since Maxim Gorky worked as a stevedore on the quays of this city. The romantic barge haulers and harbour loafers have vanished. The barefoot vagabonds, the beggars, the prostitutes — “the former people,” as Gorky called them — exist no more. Poverty has been abolished. The doss-houses, the dives, the brothels are gone. Indignity and squalor are gone. The dockworkers now have their clubs and palaces of culture. The sailors on the river have books brought to them when the cultural ship calls alongside their ships. Human existence has become dignified. A new generation has grown up since the revolution, a different kind of people who only know the old world from literature. We had seen Gorky’s “The Lower Depths” at the Moscow Arts Theatre, where Stanislavski had staged it almost fifty years ago and himself played the vagabond Satine. They had closely followed the master’s old realistic production, and the play made a very powerful impression. But for present-day Russians it is history; “the former people” in the play, the lost ones, the hopeless squalor no longer corresponds to any reality; younger people in the audience smiled where there was nothing to smile about, these conditions are no longer comprehensible.

A female sailor threw the mooring line, a plump girl in a headscarf and a white blouse with a blue sailor collar. Our ship’s helmsman was a dignified old man with an enormous white moustache like Budyonny’s, and many medals on his chest. He told us that during the fighting for Stalingrad he had commanded a convoy of seven tugboats that ferried supplies day in and day out from the east bank to the west bank, carrying the wounded back the other way. These crossings took place under constant bombing and shellfire. The boats were hit repeatedly; once a shell landed in the engine room. The old helmsman had been in the water many times; the worst was when there was burning oil on the surface. They say the Volga carries as much freight as all of Russia’s other rivers combined. The river traffic was immense, paddle steamers, tugboats, ferries, and fishing boats. You could also see a large lone sailing ship on the broad river, black tank steamers and white motor ships, excursion boats and pleasure craft, enormous timber rafts with houses and livestock aboard, barges piled to the skies with oil and ore and grain sacks and salt, pulled by tugboats that have now replaced the barefoot burlaks of old, the barge haulers who, harnessed about their bodies, dragged the heavy barges mile after mile. Only their songs survive and are still sung, strangely slow and melancholic as the river’s current. From the boats came songs and the sound of balalaikas, and on the timber rafts roosters crowed; there were chicken coops aboard and sometimes sheep and cows as well. God knows how long these rafts had been traveling from the forest districts along the Volga’s northern tributaries?

Volga at Stalingrad, May 1950

Also the countless songs about Stenka Razin have remained remarkably alive and popular. The folk hero and rebel plays a role in Russian history akin to that of Skipper Klement[1] in our own, though the Russian peasantry apparently had a keener sense of poetry than their Danish counterparts, given that several hundred folk songs were dedicated to this great rebel. Stenka Razin was a Don Cossack. With his band of outlawed peasants and Cossacks, he made his way from the Don to the Volga, hauling his ships across the dry land. As he neared the fortified city of Tsaritsyn, the townsfolk threw the tsar’s voivode into the Volga and opened the city gates to Stenka Razin. He took up residence in Tsaritsyn for a month. Prince Prozorovsky, the voivode of Astrakhan, sent ships with streltsy against him, but when the streltsy saw the famed liberator, they shouted: “Look, there he is, our father and protector of the poor!” And they disarmed their officers and delivered them up to Stenka. Later, Stenka Razin sailed down the Volga and conquered Astrakhan. Great throngs of outlawed peasants who had abandoned the estates joined him, along with the free Cossack tribes who had sought refuge on the steppe to escape the tsar’s rule. It became a mighty rebellion, a revolutionary uprising, comparable to the Peasants’ War in Germany in Luther’s time. At Simbirsk, Stenka Razin suffered defeat at the hands of the tsar’s troops; he was captured and taken to Moscow and was executed on the Red Square in the summer of 1670.

Many peoples have fought over the Volga. Since antiquity, countless tribes have passed across the broad stream and settled on its banks: Scythians, Avars, Huns, Turks, Sarmatians, and Tartars. Even before the Christian era, the Volga was a trade route between Scandinavia and Central Asia. From the Baltic, Swedish Vikings sailed up through the Neva, across Lake Ladoga, and reached Beloozero via various waterways, where they found their way to the Volga system, after having often had to drag their boats over land. The Russians came rather late to the great river, which we have grown accustomed to regard as a quintessentially Russian symbol, the Mother Volga of the folk songs, an almost sacred stream, like the Ganges in India. When Tsar Fyodor built Tsaritsyn as a fortress with oak palisades and wooden towers in the late 16th century, the Volga was still the eastern border of the realm, and Tsaritsyn a fort for protection against the nomads of the steppe.

Like most Russian rivers, the Volga flows quite slowly. When you stand on the ship and look down into the river, you cannot see which way the water is moving. The gradient towards the Caspian Sea is only quite slight. Throughout its lower course, the Volga has no tributaries or inflows, because the steppes through which it runs are devoid of water. I once read in a reference book that the Soviet Union has 42 rivers each exceeding a thousand kilometres in length. The Volga is 3,857 kilometres long. Here at Stalingrad, it is roughly as wide as the Øresund at Helsingør[2], but in the spring the river rises by over nine metres at Stalingrad.

We first sailed a stretch along the western bank and looked at the city. From out here, Stalingrad resembles an immense construction site with giant cranes lifting materials up to the new tall residential blocks; you feel you can see the city growing upwards. The new Stalingrad turns its face towards the east, towards the river, with terraces and parks and promenades on the clay slopes. They do not skimp on columns; they love colonnades and columned arcades in this country, they can afford ornament and lavishness, they are fond of trees and flower arrangements; a certain oriental character is becoming characteristic of the new white Stalingrad, which is hardly surprising for a city with a direct outlook onto Asia, and on the outskirts of which camels graze.

Later, we sailed across the river, which took about twenty minutes. We docked at a jetty, and our little plump female sailor gracefully threw a line ashore. Forests have been planted on this eastern bank. One of the eight immense shelterbelts being established according to the great plan follows the Volga from Astrakhan to Stalingrad and continues north from there toward Saratov. Alongside these plantings, canals and water reservoirs have been dug. The trees were birch, aspen, poplar, Tartarian maple, and various kinds of willow, with open clearings between them. Across a large expanse by the river, the woodland was laid out as a pleasure park and recreational area for the citizens of Stalingrad. There were open-air cafés, pavilions, bandstands, dance floors, an open-air theatre, ice-cream parlors, candy stalls, and the book kiosks that you see everywhere in this country. The decorations from the May Day festivities were still up: a couple of huge portraits of Lenin and Stalin, flagpoles, and arrangements for illuminations. In addition, there were the usual display boards with graphs and figures concerning the fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan. These boards and statistics, which you would not think would interest many people, are studied and discussed with great eagerness. In New York, I have seen elevator boys and young salesgirls study stock-market listings with the same interest, and in Copenhagen, it applies to the betting results. In the Soviet Union, the monthly production results are something that concerns everyone, because everyone is involved, and everyone has a vivid awareness that the figures are decisive for their daily existence.

I have no idea how wide the forest belt is. Gabrielsen and I walked a good way into the woods until we came to a canal, and apparently the forest continued to stretch for many kilometres yet. According to what Gabrielsen had been told, 15 billion trees are being planted. While the interior of North America is gradually turning into desert due to wind erosion, here they are going the opposite way. The desert between the Euphrates and the Tigris was once, at the dawn of time, a fertile land; it was here that the Garden of Eden lay. In India and China, fertile regions have turned into wastelands. A Danish professor once spoke on the radio about this erosion, which, in his opinion, would turn large parts of the world into desert and create unheard-of famines; but the professor did not mention that in the Soviet Union they are going the opposite way and turning deserts into fertile land.

Then we sailed back again to Stalingrad. You could not help but think of Konstantin Simonov’s book, “Days and Nights”. Here we had the setting. The hinterland on the Volga’s eastern side. The west bank with its clay slopes, where Captain Saburov had crept through the German lines; the ruins; Pavlov’s House; and the tugboats shuttling back and forth across the river under a downpour of bombs and shells.

The old helmsman stood at the wheel, the naval hero with the Budyonny moustache and the many medals. He must have been a grown man when the Revolution came; he had lived through the Civil War and the battles for Tsaritsyn against Krasnov’s and Wrangel’s White Guards. And day after day, he had ferried ammunition and provisions across the Volga when the German Nazis had pushed into the city. With Stahl as interpreter, we spoke again with the old warrior; he told us about his sons—two had been killed in Stalingrad’s ruins, but the third was still alive, having lost both hands during the war. In the afternoon, we flew back to Moscow. We drove the long way out to the airfield on the steppe; we saw camels again out in the flat landscape, and we saw soldiers’ graves in the desert, adorned with fresh flowers. We saw Stalingrad from the air, ruins and new buildings and newly planted green trees.

This was the city of life and the city of death. Human tenacity and human insanity. There were newly erected houses and newly planted trees. And there were mass graves and memorial stones. People had bled out on every single square metre of ground. In the thick of the fighting, they were building tanks inside the tractor factory. They worked as bombs and shells hailed down upon the rooftops, with the Germans already holding one end of the plant. They worked while the snow swept in through the shattered walls, and when a tank was finished, it was crewed by the workers who had built it, who immediately rolled out to engage the enemy.

There we learned in Stalingrad that this people cannot be defeated. If they are left in peace, they will have built a great, beautiful new city here within a couple of years. If war is forced upon them, they will fight, even if it must be with their bare fists, just as they fought against the Germans, from house to house, from ruin to ruin. These people have something to defend and something to die for. They cannot be defeated.

They showed us their city, and they showed us their ordeal, and they asked us: Do you think we want war again? Do you think we long to relive what we have already endured?

No normal person who has seen Stalingrad can believe that the Soviet Union would ever willingly go to war. But if the sick men of the West repeats Hitler’s atrocity, they will meet the same fate as he.

Original Danish text

Rejse i Sovjetunionen

  • Hans Scherfig, 1950

XII.

Vi havde spurgt vores værter i Stalingrad, om vi ikke kunne komme ud at sejle på Volga. De stillede et helt skib til vores rådighed.

Det var en lille hurtig damper, vistnok et tidligere marinefartøj. Nu fungerede det som kultur-skib. Til en havn i Sovjetunionen hører nemlig et kultur-skib, som skal betjene mandskabet på fragtskibene med bøger, film osv. Kultur-skibet medfører et velforsynet bibliotek, samlinger af grammofonplader og noder, apparat til forevisning af film, og det befordrer foredragsholdere og kunstnere.

Livet ved floden har forandret sig, siden Maxim Gorkij arbejdede som lastdrager på denne bys kajer. De romantiske pramdragere og havnesjovere er forsvundet. De barfodede vagabonder, tiggerne, de prostituerede — »de færdige mennesker«, som Gorkij kaldte dem — eksisterer ikke mere. Fartigdommen er afskaffet. Natteherbergerne, knejperne, bordellerne er borte. Uværdigheden og usselheden er borte. Havnens arbejdere har nu deres klubber og kultur-paladser. Flodens matroser får byttet bøger, når deres skibe anløbes af kultur-båden. Den menneskelige tilværelse er blevet værdig. En ny generation er vokser op efter revolutionen, en anden slags mennesker, som kun kender det gamle fra litteraturen. Vi havde set Gorkijs »Natteherberge« på Kunstner-teatret i Moskva, der hvor Stanislavskij for snart halvtreds år siden satte det i scene og selv spillede vagabonden Satins rolle. Man havde nøje fulgt mesterens gamle realistiske iscenesættelse, og stykket virkede meget stærkt. Men for nulevende russere er det historie, »de færdige mennesker« i stykket, de fortabte, usselheden uden håb svarer ikke mere til nogen virkelighed; yngre mennesker blandt tilskuerne smilede, hvor der ikke var noget at smile over, disse tilstande er ikke mere forståelige.

En kvindelig matros kastede fortøjningen, en buttet pige med hovedtørklæde og hvid bluse med blå matroskrave. Styrmanden på vores skib var en værdig gammel mand med et vældigt hvidt overskæg ligesom Budjonnyjs og mange ordener på brystet. Han fortalte, at han under kampene om Stalingrad havde været fører for en konvoj på syv bugserbåde, som dag ud og dag ind sejlede forsyninger fra østbredden til vestbredden og bragte sårede den modsatte vej. Transporterne foregik under bestandigt bombardement og granatild. Bådene blev ofte ramt, engang faldt en granat i maskinrummet. Den gamle styrmand havde tit været i floden, det var værst, når der var brændende olie på vandet. Det siges, at der på Volga transporteres lige så megen fragt som på alle Ruslands andre floder tilsammen. Der var en vældig trafik på floden af hjuldampere, slæbebåde, færger og fiskefartøjer. Man så også et enkelt stort sejlskib på den brede flod, sorte tankdampere og hvide motorskibe, udflugsbåde og lystbåde, enorme tømmerflåder med huse og husdyr, lægtere med olie og malm og kornsække og salt stablet himmelhøjt og trukket af de bugserbåde, som nu har afløst fortidens barfodede burlaker, pramdragerne, som med sele om liver slæbte de tunge lægtere mil efter mil. Bare deres sange eksisterer endnu og synges endnu, underlig langsomme og melankolske som flodens løb. Fra bådene lyder der sang og balalajkaspil, og på tømmerflåderne galer hanerne, der er hønsegård med ombord og sommetider også får og køer. Gud ved hvorlænge disse flåder har været undervejs fra skovdistrikterne ved Volgas nordlige bifloder?

Også de utallige sange om Stenjka Rasin har holdt sig mærkelig levende og populære. Folkehelten og oprøreren Stenjka Rasin spiller en lignende rolle i Ruslands historie som skipper Klement hos os, men den russiske almue har åbenbart haft mere sans for poesi end den danske, siden der er digtet nogle hundrede folkeviser om den store oprører. Stenjka Rasin var donkosak, og med sin hær af fredløse bønder og kosakker kom han dragende fra Don til Volga slæbende sine skibe over det tørre land. Da han nærmede sig den befæstede Tsaritsyn, smed byens indbyggere tsarens vojvod i Volga og åbnede byens porte for Stenjka Rasin. Han residerede i Tsaritsyn i en måned. Fyrst Prosorovskij, som var vojvod i Astrakan, sendte skibe med strelitser imod ham, men da strelitserne så den berømte frihedshelt, råbte de: Se, der er han, vores far og de fattiges beskytter! Og de afvæbnede deres officerer og udleverede dem til Stenjka. Senere sejlede Stenjka Rasin ned ad Volga og erobrede Astrakan. Store skarer af fredløse bønder, som havde forladt godserne, sluttede sig til ham sammen med de frie kosakstammer, som havde søgt ud på steppen for at undgå tsarens herredømme. Det blev en vældig oprørsbevægelse, en revolutionær rejsning, som kan sammenlignes med bondekrigen i Tyskland på Luthers tid. Ved Simbirsk led Stenjka Rasin nederlag mod tsarens tropper; han blev taget til fange og ført til Moskva og blev henrettet på Den røde plads i sommeren 1670.

Mangfoldige folkeslag har kæmpet om Volga. Siden oldtiden har utallige stammer passeret den brede strøm og har slået sig ned ved dens bredder: skyther, avarer, hunner, tyrker, sarmater, tartarer. Allerede før den kristne tid var Volga en handelsvej mellem Skandinavien og Centralasien. Fra Østersøen sejlede svenske vikinger op gennem Nevaen over Ladogasøen og nåede ad forskellige vandveje til Beloozero, hvor de fandt frem til Volga-systemet, efter at de ofte havde månet slæbe deres både over land. Russerne kom temmelig sent til den store flod, som man er vant til at betragte som et særlig russisk symbol, folkevisernes Moder Volgas, en næsten hellig strøm som Ganges i Indien. Da tsar Fjodor engang i slutningen af det 16. århundrede byggede Tsaritsyn som en fæstning med palisader af egetræ og trætårne, var Volga endnu rigets østlige grænse, og Tsaritsyn et fort til beskyttelse mod steppens nomader.

Som de fleste russiske floder flyder Volga ganske langsomt. Når man står på skibet og kigger ned i floden, kan man ikke se, hvad vej vandet bevæger sig. Faldet mod Det kaspiske hav er kun ganske ringe. I hele sit nedre løb har Volga ingen bifloder eller tilløb, fordi stepperne, den løber igennem, er uden vand. Jeg har læst i en håndbog, at der er 42 floder i Sovjetunionen, som hver især er over 1000 kilometer lange. Volga er 3857 kilometer lang. Her ved Stalingrad er den omtrent så bred som Øresund ved Helsingør, men om foråret stiger floden over ni meter ved Stalingrad.

Vi sejlede først et stykke langs den vestlige bred og så på byen. Herudefra ligner Stalingrad en umådelig stor byggeplads med kæmpekraner, som løfter materialerne op til de nye høje husblokke; man synes, man kan se byen vokse i vejret. Det nye Stalingrad vender ansigtet mod øst, mod floden med terrasser og parker og promenader på de lerede skrænter. Der bliver ikke sparet på søjler, man elsker kolonader og søjlegange i dette land, man har råd til pynt og ødselhed, man holder af træer og blomsterarrangementer; et vist orientalsk præg bliver karakteristisk for det nye hvide Stalingrad, og det er vel ikke så mærkeligt for en by, som har udsigt direkte til Asien, og i hvis omegn der græsser kameler.

Senere sejlede vi tværs over floden, hvad der tog omtrent tyve minutter. Vi lagde til ved en bro, og vores buttede matrospige kastede gratiøst en line i land. Her på østbredden er der plantet skov. Et af de otte kæmpeskovbælter, som plantes efter den store plan, følger Volga fra Astrakhan til Stalingrad og derfra videre mod nord til Saratov. I forbindelse med skovplantningerne et der anlagt kanaler og vandreservoirer. Træerne var birk, asp, poppel, tartarisk ahorn og forskellige slags pil, og der var åbne sletter mellem træerne. På et stort areal ved floden var skoven lystskov og park, et udflugtssted for folk i Stalingrad. Der var friluftscafeer, pavillioner, musiktribuner, dansepladser, friluftsteater, iskagehuse, slikboder og de bogboder, som man ser allevegne i dette land. Udsmykningen fra majfesten var der stadig, et par enorme billeder af Lenin og Stalin, flagstænger og arrangementer for illumination. Desuden de sædvanlige tavler med kurver og tal angående opfyldelsen af femårsplanen. Disse tavler og statistiker, som man på forhånd ikke ville tro, at mange interesserede sig for, studeres og diskuteres meget ivrigt. Jeg har i New York set elevatordrenge og unge ekspeditricer studere børskurserne med samme interesse, og i København gælder det tipsresultaterne. I Sovjetunionen er månedens produktionsresultater noget, som kommer alle ved, fordi alle er med, og alle har en levende følelse af, at tallene er afgørende for deres daglige tilværelse.

Jeg ved ikke, hvor bredt skovbæltet er. Gabrielsen og jeg gik et godt stykke ind i skoven, indtil vi kom til en kanal, og tilsyneladende fortsatte skoven mange kilometer endnu. Efter hvad Gabrielsen havde fået at vide, bliver der planter 15 milliarder træer. Mens Nordamerikas indre på grund af vind-erosionen efterhånden bliver til en ørken, går man her den modsatte vej. Ørkenen mellem Eufrat og Tigris var engang i tidernes morgen et frugtbart land; det var her paradisets have lå. I Indien og Kina er frugtbare egne blevet til ødemarker. En dansk professor talte engang i radioen om denne erosion, som efter hans mening ville forvandle store dele af verden til ørken og skabe uhørte hunger-katastrofer; men professoren fortalte ikke, at man i Sovjetunionen går den modsatte vej og forvandler ørkner til frugtbart land.

Så sejlede vi igen tilbage til Stalingrad. Man måtte tænke på Konstantin Simonovs bog, »Dage og nætter«. Her havde vi sceneriet. Baglandet på Volgas østlige side. Vestbredden med de lerede skrænter, hvor kaptajn Saburov krøb gennem tyskernes linier. Ruinerne, Pavlovs hus. Bugserbådenes ture over floden under bomberegn og granatild.

Den gamle styrmand stod ved rattet, søhelten med Budjonnyj-skægget og de mange medaljer. Han må have været en voksen mand, da revolutionen kom, han har oplevet borgerkrigen og kampene om Tsaritsyn med Krasnovs og Wrangels hvidgardister. Og dag efter dag sejlede han ammunition og proviant over Volga, da de tyske nazister var trængt ind i byen. Med Stahl som tolk talte vi igen med den gamle kriger, han fortalte om sine sønner, de to var dræbt i Stalingrads ruiner, men den tredie levede endnu, han havde mistet begge hænder under krigen. Om eftermiddagen fløj vi tilbage til Moskva. Vi kørte den lange vej ud til flyvepladsen på steppen, vi så igen kameler ude i det flade landskab, og vi så krigergrave i ørkenen, der var pyntede med friske blomster. Vi så Stalingrad fra luften, ruiner og nybygninger og nyplantede grønne træer.

Det var livets by og dødens. Menneskelig ukuelighed og menneskeligt vanvid. Der var nybyggede huse og nyplantede træer. Og der var massegrave og mindesten. På hver eneste kvadratalen jord har mennesker forblødt. Under kampene byggede man tanks i traktorfabrikken. Man arbejdede, mens bomber og granater haglede ned over bygningerne og med tyskerne i fabrikkens ene ende. Man arbejdede, mens sneen føg ind gennem de sønderskudte vægge, og når en tank var færdig, blev den bemandet af de arbejdere, der havde bygget den og rykkede straks ud mod fjenden.

Der lærte vi i Stalingrad, at dette folk kan ikke overvindes. Hvis de får fred til det, så vil de have bygget en stor ny smuk by her i løbet af et par år. Hvis man påfører dem krig, så vil de kæmpe, om det så skal være med de bare næver, sådan som de kæmpede mod tyskerne, fra hus til hus, fra ruin til ruin. Disse mennesker har noget at forsvare og noget at dø for. De kan ikke overvindes.

De viste os deres by, og de viste os deres prøve og spurgte os: Tror I, at vi ønsker krig igen? Tror I, at vi længes efter at gennemleve det en gang til, som vi har oplevet?

Intet normalt menneske, som har set Stalingrad, kan tro, at Sovjetunionen nogensinde frivilligt skulle gå i krig. Men hvis de syge mennesker i vesten gør Hitlers forbrydelse om igen, så vil de få den samme skæbne som han.

  1. Klemen Andersen “Skipper” Clement (c. 1484-1536), Danish merchant, captain and privateer who led a failed peasant rebellion against the Jutlandish gentry during the 1534-1536 “County’s Feud” war of Danish succession leading to to the protestant reformation. Clement is well known today especially because of a 1970 song about his rebellion that has been popular in leftist circles ever since. ↩︎

  2. Ca. 4 km. ↩︎