Christine-Felice Röhrs

Germany. 38 kilometers since the last night’s stop. That makes 90 kilometers in two days. Germany has greeted us inhospitably, with snowdrifts. The Germans fear the Russians’ wrath. They flee and leave all their belongings behind. It is somehow grimly satisfying to witness this spectacle. Death for death, blood for blood. I feel no pity for these misanthropes.

Wladimir Gelfand wrote this in his diary on 28 January 1945. It was his first day in a country that he was helping to conquer. In the preceding months he had had no permanent combat assignment; he had drifted around and been reprimanded for it, and had looked into his commander’s eyes in amazement at how harsh and ruthless he could be. He entrusted all this to his diary because, as a young Red Army soldier, he dreamed of becoming a writer. Keeping a diary was his training.

Germany Diary opens up a world that for many is still associated with the image of the faceless “Russian.” The book pulls one person out of that mass and turns “the Russian” into an individual — not merely a soldier, but a young man, almost an adolescent in the Red Army. During his “adventures” in Germany from January 1945 to September 1946, Wladimir was only in his early twenties.

What kind of man is this twenty-year-old soldier in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army? Not an especially fortunate one. Wladimir is naïve and shy, yet vain and ambitious. His aspirations are lofty, but his everyday life is far more prosaic. A persistent sense of injustice never leaves him. Sometimes one wants to shake him and say: “Stop whining, comrade!” Medals are one example. Wladimir believes he is being denied an award because of hostility toward intellectuals within the officer corps.

But the book reveals more than personal feelings. It shows life inside a gigantic military machine marked by chaos, weak discipline, corruption, theft and even outright madness. This is how he describes his superiors: “Karpenko is an idiot. It seems he will get drunk senseless again today, as he does every day, and then start firing whatever weapon happens to be at hand. He mocks everyone and does whatever he wants. Today we argued over a trifle, and a clay pot flew into the wall and smashed beside me.”

The editor explains the historical context in which Gelfand found himself only in the afterword. That seems a mistake, because he was a witness to world-historical events — but the diarist himself hardly notices them. On the day Germany capitulates, for example, he writes nothing at all. Other things matter more to him: girls.

This is how he describes Germany: “There are girls here. Very accommodating, but one has sagging breasts, and something is wrong with the other, although she looks quite good. I did a little sweet-talking, but got nowhere.”

For a year and a half Gelfand travels around Berlin and the surrounding region: Wusterhausen, Kremmen, Rüdersdorf, Caputh and Neustrelitz, where he is treated for gonorrhea. He gets himself a permanent wave. He learns to ride a bicycle. This is not the stereotypical “bad Russian.” He does not rape; rather, he himself is embarrassed by German Fräuleins. He does not loot — although on 16 June he takes part in the looting of the Academy of Sciences, doing so with regret: “Never in my life did I think I was capable of such a filthy act, but people and circumstances are forcing me.”

The book covers only a year and a half of his life, but it reads like a full-fledged adventure. Wladimir Gelfand changes. The final entry says: “Today, once again, to the Berlin market. I must buy something else. Perhaps I will never see Germany again.” It sounds sad.