From Margarita Aliger’s 1968 Introduction to her 1942 poem “Zoya”
Plus some fragments of the poem below it.
In the first days of December, 1941, in the village Petrishevo, near the city of Vereya, Nazis executed an 18-year old woman, a member of the Komsomol (*Communist Youth organization), who called herself Tatiana. In truth, she turned out to have been a Muscovite schoolgirl named Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
“Zoya” is a poem grounded in reality. I was writing it in 1942, several months after Zoya’s death, on the hot trail of her brief life and heroic death. When one writes about factual events, the first condition of such work is faithfulness to the truth, faithfulness to the epoch, and “Zoya”, in essence, also became a poem about my youth, about our youth. In that poem, I wrote about all that we lived for when we fought against German Fascism, about everything that was important to us during those years. And I wrote about how during the tragic autumn of 1941, on the anniversary evening of the October Revolution, the entire country was listening to every word of Stalin’s speech, broadcasted out of a Moscow surrounded by enemy forces (*Stalin having refused to be evacuated). That speech genuinely meant a lot to us at that time, as did Zoya’s response during her interrogation (*even under the most grueling torture): “Stalin’s still at his post.”
More than 25 years had passed since then. And these years have been densely filled with various events and anxieties, with thunderous shocks, and with eye-opening disillusionments. I suffered through them with every molecule of my being, with every fragment of my existence. And Zoya did not. I know now the true characterization which history will give to Stalin and to his works, and that today differentiates me from Zoya. That difference between her and I did not yet exist at the time when the poem was being written. And I don’t believe that I have any right to correct it from the vantage point of today’s enlightenment. I am printing the poem exactly as it was written in 1942, in the service of the historical and the spiritual truth of that epoch. Because it is absolutely necessary to know the truth of the past in order to understand in full measure the truth of the present.
-1968
From “Zoya”
By Margarita Aliger
…
The world sometimes offers such glorious moments,
Such glorious flicker of sunspots on lids,
When vanish completely all possibly worries,
And everything’s known, understood, and believed.
And all of your life will be marvelous onwards,
And this is forever, and can’s happen elsewise,
For all of the world is so sturdy, built clearly
For happiness, joys, and for all sorts of fortunes.
…
Oh, come on, my friends, don’t sweat it!
Loved too weakly,
Worked too little,
Maybe managed worse
Than wished for,
By the time
Of the invasion.
Could we though have been
Much different?
And it’s all nobody’s fault,
Nor that we all cry a little
Over this or that sheer trifle.
After all, we had such friendships,
Such great loves, and such true faith.
Is there cause to be regretful?
We lived well, and did our best.
But at once,
A storm,
Push,
Minute,
With no pity smashed across,
Ripped, uprooting in one burst,
Every aim with strain established.
…