Tomorrow is Yesterday: A Novel of Wartime Belarus (1968)

The young woman with the Red Star on her pilot's cap is Mary's old schoolmate, Lara Voynik. In the partisan dug-out everyone addresses her respectfully as Larisa Siamionawna, and she recognises Mary at once. To her, the wounded teacher is a fascist who poisoned Soviet children with enemy propaganda. She orders Doctor Posnik and the nurse Prudnikava to take good care of Mary: she does not want her to die, not yet.

As her strength returns, Mary is put to work in the kitchen and the field hospital and quietly learns what she can. Most of the men are peasants recruited by force, with little heart for the fight. Russians sent from the Big Land hold the commands, and the nightly "reconnaissance" trips to the villages fool no one. Lara is the protégée and lover of the unit commander, Karpatin; she screens new recruits and enjoys the punitive expeditions.

Late in the winter Mary is pronounced healthy, though broken in spirit, alone, and with nothing left to live for. One night she is pulled out of bed and taken to Lara at the command post. Lara has been drinking samahonka (самагонка), and she has a great deal to say.

Glossary and notes:
Larisa Siamionawna: Lara's first name and patronymic, a formal and respectful form of address
Polizei: the German-run auxiliary police
Big Land: the partisans' name for the unoccupied Soviet territory behind the front
samahonka (самагонка): home-made, home-distilled vodka
Content note: this chapter describes the mistreatment of a wounded prisoner and reports a massacre of villagers.

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e11

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

The "Culture for the Masses" picnic turns into an afternoon of vodka, dancing and walks in the woods. Lara Voynik enjoys herself with abandon, passing from one admirer to the next, until someone asks her where Viktar is.

Viktar Viasiolka is lying in the shade of a giant oak with Mary, in plain view of everyone, making her laugh. He likes her modesty and her quick mind; she likes his stories of the far-off places he has seen on his travels with his father. But many of his jokes are sharp satire aimed at the all-powerful Communist Party, and his daring both intrigues and frightens Mary, who half suspects he is testing her. He has just finished a joke about a backwoods party official who adds six billion people to the world's population in a single speech when Lara, drunk and crimson-faced, bursts out of the trees at the head of a crowd of classmates, shouting that she will teach Mary a lesson.

A ring of cheering, jeering classmates closes around the two girls, and Viktar, the cause of it all, joins it to enjoy the show. Word of the uproar spreads through the meadow.

Glossary and notes:
Kamsamol (камсамол): the Communist Youth League, the Soviet party's organisation for young people
kulak: a better-off peasant, branded a class enemy under Soviet rule; a "sub-kulak" was one only a little less so
wolf's ticket: a Soviet black mark that barred a person from study or advancement
social trial: a public hearing in which a school or workplace collective judged its members' conduct
Viciebsk: the Belarusian form of Vitebsk

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e10

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

Before the war, in Haradok, the local Communist Party and Kamsamol (камсамол) leaders hatch a new idea. Sun, water and fresh air belong to the peasants and proletarians, they declare, and must now serve the people's health and proletarian culture. The party secretary, a vain careerist eager to climb the bureaucratic ladder, proposes a grand outing called "Culture for the Masses", a Soviet version of the annual picnic, on a meadow ringed by the river a mile out of town.

For two evenings Kamsamol members and Communist Pioneers plaster the town with posters and march through the streets with torches. On Sunday a column of school students and trade-union members parades to the meadow under banners thanking great Stalin for a happy childhood, a huge portrait of the dictator swaying at its head. But the crowds have their own ideas about rest. While the secretary speechifies and the agitbrigade (агітбрыгада) dishes out its propaganda songs, people swim in the cool river, open the food and drink they have brought, and wait for the band to strike up a foxtrot. A gust of breeze takes an interest in the portrait.

Glossary and notes:
Kamsamol (камсамол): the Communist Youth League, the Soviet party's organisation for young people
Communist Pioneers: the Soviet organisation for schoolchildren
agitbrigade (агітбрыгада): a troupe performing propaganda songs, recitals and dances
party secretary: the head of the local Communist Party committee

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e09

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

The story steps back to Mary's school days. A Belarusian folk tale tells how the Creator, running short of gifts while making the animals, invented the law of compensation: the dim-witted bull got powerful horns, the timid hare fast legs, the plain nightingale its exquisite voice. People, the narrator suggests, are made the same way.

In high school Mary meets the perfect example. Larisa Voynik, called Lara, is sixteen, blonde, blue-eyed and strikingly beautiful. Brought up in a state children's home, she is also coarse, aggressive and spiteful, and makes no effort to hide it. The boys are drawn by her looks, then put off by her temper, and they keep choosing the company of Mary, who is modest, hard-working and top of her class. Lara cannot believe that anyone so pretty can also be decent, and sets out to discredit her with vile gossip. Mary traces every rumour back to Lara, but refuses to take the matter to the Kamsamol (камсамол), the Communist Youth League.

Then Viktar Viasiolka arrives in town, the handsome, witty son of a high-ranking railway official. Lara decides at once that he is hers.

Glossary and notes:
Kamsamol (камсамол): the Communist Youth League, the Soviet party's organisation for young people
state children's home: a Soviet orphanage
Chapters 8 to 10 step back to Mary's school years before the war.

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e08

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

Mary opens her eyes in a place she does not know: a dug-out the size of a large room, its log ceiling white with frost, four beds on either side of a narrow aisle. Her side is bandaged, and every movement hurts. Fragments of that night return, the struggle in the bedroom and her daughter's screams, and then a flash like lightning.

A hunched figure in a heavy babushka kerchief sits over some papers by a small kerosene lamp. She is Prudnikava, a nurse, and she brings Mary water and fetches the doctor, a heavy-set, bearded, fatherly man named Posnik. Two bullets have been taken out of her, the doctor says, and she lost so much blood that they almost gave her up for dead. She is among partisans, and they have saved her life. When Mary asks where her mother and children are, he tells her only that she must not get excited, and his evasion says more than words.

By the next morning every bed in the dug-out is full. The doctor and the nurses talk in low voices about where to put the wounded from a heavy fight with the Germans.

Glossary and notes:
babushka kerchief: a headscarf tied under the chin
partisans: Soviet guerrilla fighters operating behind the German lines

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e07

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

Partisan and German zones of control shift from week to week, and the villages on the fringes are fair game for both. Late in the autumn, word reaches Shuly of a Volga-German named Bergdorf in the Schutzpolizei unit operating in the area. He is said to avoid open fights with partisans but to be adept at pillage, rape and burning, and two days ago he shot suspected partisan helpers in broad daylight in the village of Lastawka, three miles away.

Then winter comes to Shuly. Snow blankets the fields and the forest, and at night every barking dog may herald pillagers or executioners. Late one night, by the light of a home-made wick in a tin of precious kerosene, Mary is nursing little Alenka, who has a bad cold and keeps her brother awake. Her mother Aksinya steps out to fetch firewood for the morning. In the pale moonlight Aksinya sees two sleighs coming up the road toward the village. She runs back inside to warn her daughter, crosses herself and prays before the icons. Heavy steps sound on the verandah, the door flies open, and armed men walk into the house as if they own it.

Glossary and notes:
Volga-German: a member of the old German community settled on the Volga in Russia
Schutzpolizei: the auxiliary police the Germans raised in occupied Belarus, under German command
Schmeisser: the German MP 40 submachine gun
Content note: this chapter describes violence against a family, including a baby, and a shooting.

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e06

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

The second year of the war brings a new kind of life to the great Belarusian forests. Soviet operatives arrive by parachute, and Red partisan units grow from deserters, escaped prisoners and village youths recruited by force. The Germans answer with auxiliary police, the Schutzpolizei, filled largely with riff-raff. Shuly, between the forest and the highway, is caught in the jaws of both: partisans pass through by night, the Germans come by day.

Mary is back at work in the village school, teaching two grades at a time. One cloudy autumn morning the classroom door flies open. A grizzled, bearded man with a Red Star on his cap and a submachine gun in his hand stands in the doorway, two companions behind him. He sprays the Pahonia (Пагоня), the Belarusian emblem of a knight on a white horse that hangs above the door, with bullets. He sends the frightened children running to bring their parents within half an hour, and turns on the teacher. He reeks of samahonka (самагонка), home-made vodka, and he wants to know what kind of Soviet woman teaches children what she teaches.

Glossary and notes:
Schutzpolizei: the auxiliary police the Germans raised in occupied Belarus, under German command
Samaakhova (Самаахова): the Belarusian self-defence corps formed under the German occupation
BKA (Беларуская Краёвая Абарона): the Belarusian Home Defence, the Belarusian army raised under the German occupation late in the war
Pahonia (Пагоня): the Belarusian coat of arms, a mounted knight in pursuit of the enemy
samahonka (самагонка): home-made, home-distilled vodka
kamsamolka (камсамолка): a young woman member of the Kamsamol, the Communist Youth League
Content note: this chapter describes the beating and torture of a woman.

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e05

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

Five weeks after the night of the knock, Mary still slips out after dark to take food to the soldier hidden in the hayloft at the lasnichowka (ляснічоўка). The people of Shuly divide the collective land into private plots and tend it. Trains carry German troops and supplies east, while long grey columns of Soviet prisoners of war trudge west along the highway under guard, and the villagers are made to bury those who cannot go on.

On a trip to the county town of Haradok, Mary visits her friend Yustyna Murashka, a fellow teacher since their student days at the Miensk Pedagogical Institute. Yustyna has heard that in September the schools will reopen, teaching in Belarusian and German, and that Mary will surely be called back.

Mary longs for her ward to recover and leave. In the dark he seems fit enough, and more than once he has grabbed at her when she came close. Her mother teases her, then warns her to be careful. So one day Mary takes a home-made osier basket, as if to pick mushrooms, and walks into the forest in daylight to see for herself how well Vanya Kolpakoff really is.

Glossary and notes:
lasnichowka (ляснічоўка): the forest warden's lodge
Miensk: the Belarusian form of Minsk, the capital
osier: willow twigs used for basket-weaving
Content note: this chapter describes an attempted sexual assault and the shooting of prisoners of war.

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e04

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

Early the next morning the Germans come. Tanks and lorries roll down the dusty highway past Shuly, and the villagers stand by the roadside, mouths agape. The older folk, who remember the First World War and how their country's brief independence was lost again to Moscow and Warsaw, keep their thoughts guarded.

Two days later a young blond Wehrmacht lieutenant reads out the first order of the new masters in front of the school. The hated collective farms will be dissolved and land given to anyone willing to work it. Communists, weapons and radios must be handed over, and Red Army deserters must on no account be sheltered. Anyone who disobeys will be shot.

For Mary and her mother Aksinya, the wounded soldier in their bedroom is now a sword hanging over the house. He has told Aksinya that his name is Vanya Kolpakoff, that he is from Leningrad and newly married. Both women feel uneasy under his gaze, yet they resolve to help him, as they hope someone is helping Mary's missing husband. Kolpakoff himself suggests a better hiding place: the barn still standing at the burned-out lasnichowka (ляснічоўка), the forest warden's lodge deep in the woods.

Glossary and notes:
Wehrmacht: the German armed forces
lasnichowka (ляснічоўка): the forest warden's lodge
lasnik (ляснік): a state forest warden, under Soviet rule usually a Russian official

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e03

Published by Grunwald Publishing.

In a Toronto jail cell, Mary Karaway thinks of the murderer of her children and her mother, perhaps walking these very streets, and her memories carry her back to the war.

The Red Army is in retreat. Her village of Shuly lies half a mile off the highway on the edge of a forest, and the villagers, who have had their fill of the collective farms imposed by Moscow, wait to see what the advancing Germans will bring. A week ago an official letter told Mary that her young husband Valodzia is missing in action; she still hopes he will come home. She lives with her mother Aksinya, her six-year-old son, also Valodzia, and three-month-old Alenka, asleep in a crib hung from the ceiling.

One sunny afternoon German fighters pound the crowded highway. That night a knock comes at the door, then a thud on the verandah: a wounded Soviet soldier lies outside, his leg badly burned. The women carry him in, and Mary hurries through the dark forest to fetch old Nina, a shaptukha (шаптуха), a healer who works with herbs and whispered words. The soldier will need two months or more to heal, and the Germans are coming.

Glossary and notes:
shaptukha (шаптуха): a village healer who treats the sick with herbs and whispered charms
collective farm: a Soviet state-run farm into which peasants' land was forced
Muscovite: in the old Belarusian saying, a Russian, the occupier from Moscow
Content note: this chapter describes an air attack on retreating soldiers. From here the story goes back to the war years in Mary's village.

The complete novel is available in print and ebook at grunwald.ca:
https://grunwald.ca/products/tomorrow-is-yesterday-kastus-akula?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=tomorrow_is_yesterday&utm_content=tiy-e02

Published by Grunwald Publishing.