LETTERS FROM THE WAR

Reading old letters, sometimes you are amazed by the rich language and imagination of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, often ordinary workers and engineers, not writers. What inner intelligence can be felt in their letters!

Worthy of the surname

"Excuse me for writing so rarely, but, you know, we are now in a hurry to do away with the Germans, so our time is limited. Finally, to my great joy, I received your letter and feel as though I had been home. I am fine. I am you know where. The Germans have now realized what a war is. Well, of course, we are trying to explain it to them pretty thoroughly. The victory is not far off, and then we will return to a quiet and happy life, which each of us needs so strongly. You can congratulate me on another great award - the Order of the Red Banner. In short, I am at war and am trying to be worthy of the surname of our dear late father. Maybe you had the chance to take a picture of my son, please send me a photograph..."

This is one of the front-line letters written by the father of Muslim Maqomayev - Mahammad in 1944 from the trenches of Eastern Europe. Many years later, his famous son would remember every time he came to Poland that his father had been around here with the liberation army.

He was born on 27 July 1916. According to memoirs, Mahammad was a humble and kind man, who was madly in love with music, especially jazz, which was a rarity at that time. As a representative of a famous family, he could have made a wonderful career in music, but preferred doing something he loved - painting.

But here, the modesty and simplicity of character did not manifest themselves in the best way - there are almost no paintings left after Mahammad Maqomayev, he destroyed his sketches (he did not consider them worthy) and did not hold noisy exhibitions. And he worked, for the most part, as a theatre artist - he made the scenery, designed the interior of the stage, and often worked in tandem with the lighting designer. He designed performances in Baku and Maykop. He got carried away and learnt animation, which was not as popular at that time as it is now. He was a romantic with a great soul, who loved life and appreciated the word he gave. He could have stayed at home, but there is holy love for the motherland, not in words but in deeds, and he went to the front.

Soldier's life

"One and a half months have passed since my departure. I imagine what changes happened during this time. My son must be already laughing in bass? Hopefully, it will not be too long before our happy life starts bustling again... One cannot help smiling when this reality is replaced by what I imagine: my brother is working in the office or travelling to one of the plants and, exhausted with slumber, he is dreaming of me. The others are peacefully sleeping, and suddenly 'ua', 'ua'. Shura and mother are pottering around with eyes still closed near the bed of their son and grandson."

He called his wife Ayshet Shura. Mahammad and she met before the war. He was 24 and worked as a graphic designer at the Maykop national theatre. And Ayshet was a leading actress in the same theatre.

The young people fell in love, got married and moved to Baku. They lived here in the city centre in an "Italian yard" with a big family in several rooms. From there he went to the front, leaving his son, who was barely one and a half years old, to his wife and mother.

"None of us are trying to think about the worst outcome. He who thinks about death is no soldier. Let the person who is a scoundrel and wimp in the war die. Not sparing my life and energy, trying not to tarnish the name of my father and trying to be worthy of my people and family, I gave and am giving all that is in me. Now I am only asking for one thing: do everything that is possible to make my son a little bit happy, and then, perhaps, fate has really decreed that we must celebrate victory together. Very briefly about myself. I am fine and have even learned to play the accordion. So maybe, after the war, I will be able to make another 'career' as a musician. My friend Kostya is dancing to my music, so we decided to organize an ensemble. So, in the storms and lulls, we while away our lives as soldiers."

He served as a senior sergeant in Artillery Regiment 301 of the Infantry Division under the command of Colonel Georgiy Gavrilovich Pokhlebayev. He was a scout. For one of the battles, Georgiy Gavrilovich even prepared and sent a presentation to the higher headquarters to award Mahammad Maqomayev the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. However, his regiment did not receive such a high award under orders from above. It turns out that things like that also happened at the time of the war: many soldiers did not receive the rewards they deserved because of bureaucratic delays!

Two weeks before Victory

Mahammad failed to see his son and make a "career as a musician". He never returned from the war. Just two weeks before the surrender of the Nazis, he, Sergeant Maqomayev, rushed to rescue a wounded friend and was caught in the crossfire of machine guns. The scout was killed in Germany, not far from the famous Treptower Park. He was also buried there. But it so happened that his fellow fighters took his body and buried him in Poland. On a map made immediately after the burial of Maqomayev, his grave was clearly tied to railroad tracks passing by a small Polish village. How could the maker of the map and Maqomayev's relatives know that the railway line and the village itself would soon be demolished according to the plans for "the socialist transformation of Poland"? Therefore, the initial search for the grave of Maqomayev was conducted in several provinces at the same time. It took a long time before Polish comrades finally ascertained the area where the graves of Soviet soldiers from the 823rd Regiment, including that of Mahammad Maqomayev, were located. In 1952, after the exhumation of the remains of fallen fighters, Polish friends reburied them in mass graves at the cemetery in Chojna. This is a specially-built place for the burial of Soviet soldiers who gave up their lives in the fight against fascism. Now there are 3,985 Soviet soldiers buried there.

Father and son

Growing up without a father, Muslim, as often happens with orphans, collected memories of his father bit by bit, trying to create an illusion of acquaintance for himself.

Living in Baku and working in Baku theatres, Mahammad liked to dress brightly, adored noisy celebrations, could dance well, including banned bourgeois dances. Surprisingly, brought up by his uncle Camal, Muslim was still like his father by character. They both arranged big parties, stood out for their tremendous generosity, up to gifts to strangers.

"Today is the birthday of my son. What should I wish him? Of course, many, many years of happy and joyful life, but let his life be filled with useful work for humanity, as was the life of the person whose name he bears. Let him learn to passionately love everything good, but let him also be able to wholeheartedly hate those who stand in the way of our happiness. Let him know from an early age the history of this bloody war, which was unleashed by German barbarians. Let him highly value the memory of those who fought valiantly for the independence of such tiny children like him, for the happiness of all the people and gave up their lives for them without regret. Let the word 'fascism' cause hatred and contempt in him. But let him also know that his father loves, and will love, him until his last breath, and if he has to die, he will die with his name on his lips. That's all I wanted to wish him."

It was Mahammad's last letter to his son. He wanted his son to read it on the day of his majority: he probably felt that by some mean law he would be killed on the very threshold of victory. And so it happened. These events are described in detail in the investigative story of Russian journalist Mikhail Zakharchuk, who collected a lot of unique materials about Mahammad, including interviews and clippings from military newspapers, in a small book.

Here's what Zakharchuk wrote about Mahammad Maqomayev:

"For some reason that is not quite clear to myself, the personality of a front-line scout, who died five days before the Victory, did not seem to let go of me even after the publication. And I thought about my character not even as the son of a famous Azerbaijani composer and not as the father of a world famous singer. In my undamped interest there was something quite different, infinitely far from immediate, opportunistic aspirations.

Suddenly, in the fate of a single family I saw, like in a drop of water, the reflected fate of a huge country, that fantastic price that defies the usual understanding and was paid by our then society for its future.

In fact, is it possible, in accordance with normal everyday logic, to imagine what it means for one country to lose more than 27m of its people - the price of victory is astronomic and difficult to imagine! But since the question was either victory or destruction of the state and nation - the people perceived this alternative with their deep nature. But are we fated to fully comprehend what it means to lose the middle link in the indissoluble connection of generations - father, son, grandson? In this case, if the grandfather was a gifted composer, a major, outstanding personality, and the grandson became a worthy successor of the family tradition and a singer of world renown, how much could the father do for the family, for the country and for art? Nobody will ever be able to answer this hypothetical question, because the son of a composer and father of the singer gave up his life to ensure that music does not suddenly break in the world. And in addition to everything else, a simple thought haunted me: why was this senior sergeant, who found his fate in Kustrin, buried in Poland - a hundred kilometres from the place of his death?

I am not ashamed of the high style and certain muddled roughness of thoughts here, because I have no doubt: I will still be understood by the reader correctly. In any case, he will not condemn my desire to follow the short but brilliant life of Mahammad Maqomayev step by step and within the range available to me. So I wrote a documentary story about the father of Muslim Maqomayev 'I will fulfill my duty honestly...', in which, incidentally, I have also clarified the issue of burial. It turned out that it was Marshal Zhukov who issued the order to 'disperse those killed near Berlin and in the city itself'. The commander knew that sooner or later, the command would wonder why so many of our guys were killed at the walls of the 'den'. But, as the reader knows, this is a separate, very difficult issue..."

Excerpts from the book "I will fulfill his duty honestly..." were published in two autobiographical works of Muslim Maqomayev "My love - melody" and "Memories are living in me". Here they are harmoniously supplemented by the personal experiences of Muslim. For example, Muslim's book describes a case where, once in Pomerania (Polish province) in the 1970s, he went to see the mass grave where his father was buried. "And now, 27 years after my father's death, I was able to visit him. It was the spring of 1972. I shall soon be 30, I have become older than my father, who died at 29. I remember that Saturday, 22 April. Western Pomerania, a cemetery on the outskirts of the town of Chojna, a mass grave..." Muslim later recalled. He told this story to his friend and famous poet Robert Rozhdestvenskiy, who reflected it in his absolutely brilliant poem "Father and Son".

Muslim was offered to rebury the remains of his father in his native land, to which he replied: "In my opinion, he is not in a foreign land," and left his father among his comrades, with whom he met his death, defending his own people and others, as befits a warrior.

MILITARY AWARDS

Mahammad Maqomayev was in the ranks of the Red Army from July 1941. From October 1942 to August 1943, he fought in the North Caucasus and Southern Fronts. From August 1943 Mahammad Maqomayev was a member of reconnaissance at the 823rd Artillery Regiment of the 301st Infantry Division and participated in the battles for the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Ukraine. From October 1944, he fought at the 1st Belorussian Front.

On 25-26 August 1944, in a battle near the village of Albino in Kotovskiy District of the Moldavian SSR, German units were surrounded and began a counter-attack to break through. At this point, Sergeant Mahammad Maqomayev was at a vanguard observation post. Together with a group of soldiers, they killed 20 Nazis with assault rifles and captured 18 enemy soldiers and officers. Sergeant Maqomayev had six killed Germans and two captured machine guns to his credit. By Order №42/n of 6 September 1944 in the 301st Infantry Division, Sergeant Mahammad Maqomayev was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

In early January 1945, in the battle to break through in-depth enemy defence in the area of villages of Helenow and Wyborow in Poland, the commander of the reconnaissance squad of the management platoon of the 1st Division of the 823rd Artillery Regiment, Sergeant Mahammad Maqomayev, found five machine-gun points, one mortar and one artillery battery of the enemy that were destroyed. On 15 January 1945, as they crossed the River Pilica, Maqomayev was one of the first to cross to the left bank of the river, where he monitored gun emplacements under heavy machine gun and mortar fire from the enemy. When approaching the village of Palczew, the squad of Sergeant Maqomayev suddenly came under machine-gun fire from the enemy. Instructing the squad to distract the machine gunner, Mahammad Maqomayev went round the firing point and, throwing grenades at it, destroyed the machine gun team. During the fighting for the retention of the bridgehead, he participated in repelling six counterattacks of the enemy infantry and tanks and personally killed 13 Germans.

By Order №16/n of 10 February 1945 in the troops of the 5th Shock Army, Sergeant Mahammad Maqomayev was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

On 1-2 February 1945, while taking the village of Zellin on the Oder River in Germany, the 1st Battery of the 823rd Artillery Regiment was positioned to cover the flanks and rear of the advancing 1050th Infantry Regiment. On 2 February 1945, with the coming of dawn the enemy forces launched a counterattack from the rear with two infantry battalions to encircle and destroy our units. Being on the positions of the battery, the scouts of Maqomayev repelled five enemy counterattacks. Maqomayev personally shot seven Germans, one of whom was an officer. On 3 February 1945, during taking a bridgehead on the left bank of the Oder River near the villages of Neu Berlin and Ortwig, the enemy constantly attacked our troops with large infantry forces supported by tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Sergeant Maqomayev proved himself a brave and courageous soldier, repeatedly engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with Germans, personally killed seven Nazis, destroyed two gun emplacements and captured three enemy soldiers. On 4 February 1945, the enemy again counter-attacked our forces on the bridgehead six times. There were two battalions of German infantry, 15 tanks and 10 armoured personnel carriers. Sergeant Maqomayev, being in combat formations of the infantry, shot 15 Germans from a captured German MG-38 machine gun, while the others lay down and the enemy counterattack failed. Our units managed to retain the bridgehead.

By Order №43/n of 20 March 1945 in the troops of the 9th Infantry Corps, Sergeant Mahammad Maqomayev was awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War in the 2nd degree.

A letter from the commander of the 823rd Division of the Artillery Regiment, Major Sotnikov, to the family of Sergeant Maqomayev:

"... It happened on the banks of the Spree in the suburb of Karlshorst, seven hundred metres south of the power station and the boat station on the highway.

To drag a comrade, who was wounded in both legs, through a flat road that was fired on from machine guns, we needed a man of a big and noble heart. And Mahammad, despising the danger, ran to the friend, hoisted him upon himself, carried him towards the road, got involved in hand-to-hand fighting, killed two and wounded one German, took his friend again and ran across the road. A burst of machine-gun fire finished the wounded man off and wounded Mahammad in both legs. In addition, five bullets hit his stomach and lungs. Just seven wounds. He felt poorly, but behaved bravely, joked and laughed...

Before being mortally wounded, Sergeant Maqomayev was able to show with fire from his assault rifle the location of the machine gun that shot him, which helped us to destroy him. In addition, in the same fighting, the 1st Division destroyed four gun emplacements on a tip-off from him.

By Order №68/n of 22 May 1945 in the 68th Rifle Corps, Sergeant Mahammad Maqomayev was posthumously awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War in the 1st degree."