Vasili Tyorkin: A Book about a Soldier is
one of the great epic poems of the Second World War. Published in army
newspapers and broadcast on the radio between 1942 and 1945, it was hugely popular with Soviet soldiers, many of
whom believed it was about a real person was real. Private Tyorkin is an accordion-playing Everyman figure, who
moves between comedy and reluctant heroism. He is a cheerful grumbler always on
the lookout for food and a quick kip, happy to share his last tobacco with his
comrades, hating the War but determined to fight the Nazis all the way to
Berlin.
After the War Vasili Tyorkin won the Stalin Prize and
was the subject of a famous painting by Mikhailovitch Neprintsyev. It was
dramatised for the stage in the 1960s, filmed in the 1970s and turned into a
cartoon in 2003. There is a statue of Tvardovsky and Tyorkin in Smolensk. The
poem was recently voted the 28th most popular poem of all time in
Russia.
This new translation by James
Womack brilliantly catches hardship, heroism and humour of the ordinary
soldier. It is an anti-war poem, an anti-Fascist classic, and a reminder of the
extraordinary endurance and heroism of the Soviet people during a war in which
we were allies against Nazi Germany.