My grandfather passed away this winter at the age of 81. He left behind memoirs, which he wrote since the late 80s. I’m reprinting it slowly, this living history. I don’t know what to do with all this yet, but I will publish something here.

When the war began, my grandfather was 15 years old. Then he studied at a military school, and at the end of the war and then, already in Peaceful time, served in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-NKVD.

Reprinted with minor editing from the manuscript - there may be factual inaccuracies in the names. I didn't check it, I left it as is.

I, Krasnoyartsev Petr Vasilyevich, was born on September 26, 1925, according to the new style, in the village of Izobilnoye, Sol-Iletsk district, Orenburg region.

My mother, Kudrina Maria Vasilievna, born in 1905, died 8-10 hours after giving birth. My father, Krasnoyartsev Vasily Petrovich, born in 1904, in October 1925 was drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, into the 44th Cavalry Regiment of the 2nd Cavalry Division named after. Morozov in Orenburg. I was raised by my grandmothers: Daria Stepanovna Krasnoyartseva and Anisya Alekseevna Kudrina. Until I was one year old, I lived first with one grandmother, then with another, and they fed me cow's milk from a glass horn.

When I was three years old, my father was demobilized from the Red Army. During this period, in the village of Izobilnoye there was a process of dispossession, and after that - the deportation of kulaks to remote areas of the country; collectivization began.

My father worked as chairman of the collective farm named after. Tsvilinga two s more than a year, after which he was again drafted into the same Red Army regiment.

My father married Matryona Ivanovna Donetskova, born in 1908. and went with her to Orenburg, and I stayed with my grandmother in Izobilny.

I spent my childhood from 3 to 7 years old with my mother’s brother, Uncle Pyotr Vasilyevich Kudrin. He taught me to swim, fish, cut talis for weaving and traps, and properly water the garden. I really loved collecting potatoes - Uncle Petya gave me and my friend 10 kopecks for a collected bucket.

In 1932, Uncle Petya brought me to Orenburg to visit my father, we lived on Pushkinskaya Street, and I even went to school for a year kindergarten. Then we moved to live near the Green Bazaar, opposite us there was a hippodrome, and I really loved watching the races.

In 1930, my brother Nikolai was born, but 2 years later he died. In December 1934, my sister Rosa was born.

In 1933 I went to school No. 6 named after. L. Tolstoy. I still remember the first teacher, Maria Davydovna, old and pretty, she spent a lot of effort to attract me to success in my studies. When I went to school, I only knew the letter "O". He really didn’t like reading and dictations, but he really liked mathematics and geography.

In 1936, our 2nd cavalry division was transferred to the city of Pukhovichi, Minsk region.

We moved there with the whole family. In 1939, my brother Gennady was born there.

In September 1939, during the liberation of western Belarus from the Polish occupiers, the division was redeployed to the city of Bialystok, and the regiment in which my father served was located in the town of Suprasl, 10-12 km from Bialystok. Of course, my father’s family also moved there, but my father took me, a 6th grade student, to Minsk, from where I went alone through Moscow to Izobilnoye to finish 6th grade there.

I arrived well. I spent half a day in Moscow, went on a two-hour excursion along the metro, and rode the “wonderful little staircase.” I especially remember the stations " Okhotny Ryad" and "Mayakovskaya". In the evening I took a train to Sol-Iletsk, where I was greeted by 30-degree frosts, and from there I rode on horseback to Izobilnoye.

In 1940 I graduated from the 6th grade, and in August my father came to pick me up to take me to Suprasl. There, in 1941, I graduated from 7th grade, and there the Great Patriotic War found us...

My brother Vladimir was born in Suprasly. In the spring of 1941, my father was transferred to a new duty station in Zambrovo, not far from the town of Longzha. My father held the rank of captain, he commanded the 13th tank border detachment. Having received an apartment, on June 21, 1941, he came to pick us up in Suprasl to take us to Zambrovo. Soldiers from the neighboring unit, where my father had previously served, loaded our belongings and furniture into the car. In the evening we had dinner with the unit commander, Colonel Sobakin - I remember he had only one son, Eric, a fifth-grader. We had dinner, said goodbye to them and went to rest so that we could go to Zambrovo early tomorrow morning.

At 4.30 am on June 22, 1941, we were awakened by soldiers. My father told my mother that we had to go quickly, the Germans were bombing Bialystok, then he gave me 10 rubles and told me to buy bread. The store was in our barracks, I knocked on Aunt Dora, the saleswoman, she led me through her apartment to the store, and I bought two loaves from her white bread and twenty French buns. When I brought all this home, my father and mother slightly scolded me - why did I buy so much bread, but then this bread saved us from hunger during the evacuation.

At about 5 am we left for Zambrovo. We got to Bialystok, they didn’t let us in, and we took a detour to the highway to Lomza. The Germans are advancing on it, and we are driving straight into their clutches, women and children are running towards us, there are also men, everyone is scolding us: “Where are you going?!” On the way, we were shot at 2-3 times from an airplane, on the side of the road we saw a damaged car, there the driver and father filled our car with gasoline, and we drove further to the west.

After some time, we saw a burning village ahead, explosions were heard, and people were running towards us, especially a lot of people of Jewish nationality. Somebody caught up with us war machine, her father stopped her, talked to the major who was sitting in it, then quickly ran up to us, hugged and kissed us, gave my mother money for the journey and told us to go to Bialystok, and from there home, to our homeland in Orenburg region, village Izobilnoye.

He himself quickly got into the major’s car, and they drove to where the village was burning, where people were fleeing, into the very heat.

My father went missing, I think he died almost immediately after we parted.

By the middle of the day, we drove up to the freight station in Bialystok in a car loaded with our things. It was impossible to approach the trains on which people were evacuated. There was terrible panic. There was a rumor that in an hour the Germans would be in Bialystok. Everyone was running, shouting, waiting for evacuation trains.

After some time, a train of freight cars arrived, I heard screaming and swearing, it was impossible to approach the cars to board, there were several thousand people, and these forty cars were just a minuscule amount for all the refugees located on the platform and next to it...

I don’t know and don’t remember how I crawled under the platform; it was a little more than a meter high. I crawled under the train and saw a carriage with a ladder and open door, and there is no one in it. Two or three minutes - and I was already standing by our car, telling my mother and the driver, Uncle Kolya, that I had seen an empty carriage.

I was worried about only one thing - how would mom and brother Vova get under the platform? But everything worked out, and very quickly, in a hurry, the mother took two down pillows, a blanket and two bags of bread and groceries. We quickly crawled under the platform, then under the train, climbed into the carriage and sat down on a table in the corner. Then the door opened, about 30 people, mostly women and children, poured in, under the pressure of the crowd they fell to the floor, at that moment the train started moving. I saw how a man and a woman fell between the platform and the carriage, and the train was picking up speed, the cry for help was drowned out by the roar of the train and the noise in the carriage...

Later we were informed that shortly after our departure Bialystok was in the hands of the Nazis.

We were driving towards the city of Baranovichi. On the way, at night and during the day, we were fired upon several times from Henkel-13 aircraft. When the shelling was underway, the train stopped, many ran out of the train... They were shot at. This happened several times a day.

When we passed Baranovichi, I saw a night battle, I saw how our searchlights targeted a fascist plane, how they fired tracer bullets at this plane - and past... I was very disappointed by what I saw, recently I watched the film “If Tomorrow is War” and could not believe it that our Voroshilov riflemen smeared.

The night was very alarming, our train was often fired upon, glowing missiles were thrown over us, one enemy plane riddled the last few carriages - I saw in the morning how the bodies of the dead and many wounded were carried out from there. Our carriage was in the middle, we were lucky.

Our train with evacuees was approaching Minsk. There I saw how two of our fighters landed a fascist plane on a field. Everyone who saw it was very happy about it. Minsk was burning, nothing was visible - everything was in smoke, the people sitting in the carriages were frowning, neither the sun nor the sky was visible.

When we approached Smolensk, we were again fired upon from planes, and again people were running into the forest, they were being shot at, and it was not at all clear to me, a 15-year-old boy, how the Germans could bomb Smolensk, be here, near Smolensk, everything was spinning and it was spinning in my head - how, why did we, our country, get into such a whirlpool?

From Smolensk we were sent south of Moscow; Moscow was busy with defensive work and had no time for us. We were taken to Saratov. And only the day before arriving in Saratov they stopped shelling us. It’s good that not a single bomb was dropped on our train, otherwise there would have been great casualties.

Before Saratov, at the stations we were given bread, pasta, tea - this was a great joy for people who had not seen bread for two weeks, people suffered from hunger and were sick. There was also not enough water.

Around July 5-6, our train arrived at Altata station, a few kilometers beyond the city of Engels, Saratov region. There, all the people were registered, divided into groups and sent to villages and hamlets to work on collective and state farms. Our family (5 people - mother, me, Rosa, brothers Gennady and Vladimir) bought a ticket to the Tsvilinga station in the Sol-Iletsk district. From there it is 10 km to Izobilny. They gave us food for the road.

My father, when I bought bread early in the morning of June 22, scolded me - they say he bought a lot, in 3 hours we will already be at our new place of residence. And this bread saved us from hunger on the road. Mom divided the bread between us, for the first 2-3 days we had a little more butter. Then there was only granulated sugar left - we ate that too a week later, and then we only ate buns with water, which I got at stops. There was an incident at the Sukhinichi station, which we passed through. The train stopped, we were told that it would stop for three hours. Mom gave me money and I ran to the station to buy something to eat, it was about 3 o’clock in the morning.

When I found a canteen there, I bought pasta and ten cutlets, all of which I had in a large dish. How my heart rejoiced that now I would feed everyone with cutlets! Alas. When I approached the tracks, our train was not there; it left for another station - Sukhinichi-2, a distance of 7-8 km. I and other stragglers were told that he would stand there for 3-4 hours. Everyone rushed to run along the rails.

Barefoot, in a coat but without a hat, with a dish containing cutlets and pasta, I ran along the rails to Sukhinichi-2. A lot of people stayed behind, mostly women, old people and children. Dawn has begun. We didn't get a couple of hundred meters to railway bridge across a small river - we were stopped by guards. “Stop! Back!" - they shouted, but the crowd pressed on. Then they fired two warning shots, everyone stopped and then turned towards a simple wooden bridge, along which they wanted to go around the railway. When we reached the bridge, we saw piles; on some of them lay a long log, stapled to the piles. We started the transition, the first ones walked carefully so as not to shake the log, about 20 people walked through normally, then some began to fall into the river. Many, including me with pasta and cutlets, moved while sitting. Some got across by swimming.

When I found my carriage, my mother cried a lot, called me the savior of our family, gave my sister and brother cutlets... They last days felt that they were full. Joy and happiness were on my mother’s face, tears flowed from her eyes. An hour later we drove further, east.

There was also a funny episode: on the way home in Uralsk, I met a girl, Taya, with whom I went to school in the city of Pukhovichi... She also evacuated with her family.

At the Tsvilinga station, where we finally arrived, my mother’s sister and brother lived, we stayed with them. In the morning I walked to Izobilnoye. Grandma hugged me and cried, not believing that we returned from Belarus safe and sound...

Thanks to everyone who shared their first memories.

And I remember how I was lying in a stroller and my parents were driving me along the street at night, the lights were shining and my little sister was looking inside all the time.
I believe it was a little over a year... A year and four somewhere.

Childhood experiences and emotions shape many character traits and attitudes to life. It’s not for nothing that psychologists rummage so carefully about our childhood, looking for the roots of adult problems in it: failures with the opposite sex, uncertainty, isolation, total bad luck and even illness. For you and me, this once again emphasizes the importance of the childhood period in a person’s life and obliges us to give our kids something that will give them confidence in their lives and “the posture of a king.”

First childhood memories

Usually, the first childhood memories begin around the age of 3-4 years. Does anyone know what the theories are on this matter, or does anyone have their own assumptions? Why do we, as a rule, not remember ourselves at an earlier age?
Theory in general outline such - with the normal development of the child and his relationship with his parents, the child does not perceive himself as a separate person until the age of 3; That’s why there are no memories left “to myself.” Earlier memories indicate that the child was forced to “separate” from his parents ahead of schedule. As I understand it, this can be a consequence of great stress, such as separation from parents. I can't say that I fully accept this theory; questions arise. But there is something in it.

A group of scientists found out why most adults do not remember themselves at the age of 3-4 years and younger, despite the fact that young children remember themselves well from the very beginning. early age. In the study, researchers asked 140 children aged 4-13 to describe their three earliest memories.
Two years later, the same children were again asked to recall three incidents from early childhood and, if possible, indicate how old they were in each case, reports Daily News & Analysis.
The fact that the events described by the children actually took place was confirmed by their parents. They also tried to independently remember the child's age in each individual memory.
Children who were 4-7 years old during the first experiment showed very little overlap between memories in the first and second conditions. This suggests that the earliest childhood memories are the most fragile and vulnerable.

What are your first childhood memories?

I like to ask my heroines about their first childhood memory.
Some people remember themselves at the age of five, for some, childhood memories begin at the age of three, and one actress assured me that she remembers herself even when she could not speak. Human memory is weird.
For some it’s like a flash, for others it’s like a long novel.
I remember myself clearly only with school years. I remember the hated gray hat that was tied under the chin, and my mother also rolled a scarf under it for warmth.


About childhood memories and covering memories

How far back into childhood do our memories extend? I am aware of several studies on this issue, including work by Henri and Potvin; from them we learn that there are significant individual differences; Some of those observed date their first memories to the 6th month of life, while others do not remember anything from their lives until the end of the 6th and even the 8th year. What are the reasons for these differences in childhood memories and what significance do they have? Obviously, to solve this problem it is not enough to obtain material by collecting information; its processing is necessary, in which the person from whom these messages originate must participate.
In my opinion, we are too indifferent to the facts of infantile amnesia - the loss of memories of the first years of our life, and thanks to this we pass by a peculiar mystery. We forget what high level a child reaches intellectual development already in the fourth year of life, what complex emotions he is capable of; we should be amazed at how little of these spiritual events is usually retained in memory in later years; Moreover, we have every reason to assume that these forgotten experiences of childhood did not slip without a trace in the development of a given person; on the contrary, they had an influence that remained decisive in subsequent times. And despite this incomparable influence, they are forgotten!

First childhood memories

I remember running through my grandmother’s garden in an orange sundress. As it turns out, I wore this sundress when I was about 2 years old.

American writer and philologist died on June 15, 2014. Daniel Keyes. He passed away at the age of 86. His popularity was brought to him by the novels Flowers for Algernon and Multiple Minds Billy Milligan,” whom I personally met three years ago. They left the most strong impressions and a lot of reasons for thought. May Daniel Keyes rest in peace, let us honor his memory, and remember his novels. I have already written short reviews in honor of his creations, which I will share with you below.

Daniel Keyes is the only author to win two of English-language science fiction's most prestigious awards for two works with the same title. In 1960, the story “Flowers for Algernon” was awarded the Hugo Award, and in 1966, the novel of the same name, based on it, received the Nebula Award.

The Many Minds of Billy Milligan (1981) is based on real story and tells the story of a man who is acquitted of his crimes because he suffered from multiple personality disorder. Billy Milligan is one of the most famous people with a diagnosis of “multiple personality” in the history of psychiatry (24 full-fledged personalities)

"Flowers for Algernon"

This story is about a mentally retarded man. His name is Charlie. He is calm and peaceful and works in a bakery. His “friends” laugh at him all the time, but he is only happy because he brings them joy. Thinks they love him. So he lived carefree until they decided to conduct a neurosurgical experiment on him - the same operation was performed on a mouse named Algernon, with whom he became good friends. After that he really became smart. No. He became simply a genius! He always wanted to be like this, he tried very hard. But after that things weren't so simple.

“I’m learning to hold back my resentment, to be more patient, to wait. I'm growing. Every day I learn something new about myself, and the memories that started with small ripples, are overwhelming me with a force ten storm.”

Terrible memories from the past, a desire to find out everything. There are many life problems and difficulties with certain things: relationships, self-knowledge, friendship, love, sex, struggle with oneself. He needed to understand his “I”. Find out the main thing - who is Charlie Gordon really?

“Yes, I’m awkward, but only because I’ve never found myself in such circumstances before. How does a person know how to behave with another person? How does a man know how to behave with a woman? Books are of little use. Next time I’ll definitely kiss her.”

An incredible story in which you are completely immersed and feel the state of the main character. For the first time I see deliberate spelling errors used in literature - this helps to understand as best as possible what is happening to a person and how his personality develops. Everything is so touching that it is often impossible to hold back without shedding a tear. I recommend reading it. There is something for everyone here. It is not surprising that this book is included in the compulsory reading program in American schools.

This grandiose story has amazing psychological power and makes you think about many life values.

"The Many Minds of Billy Milligan"

At one time there were rumors about a popular book that told about real existing person with a split personality. And what’s wrong with that, I thought, there are thousands like him all over the world. But when I found out that this character has about two dozen of these “images”, he was surprised and skeptical about this information. But over time, I started reading Daniel Keyes’ book “The Many Minds of Billy Milligan.” Interest was fueled by information that this story is supported by a foundation with real-life events.

The mysterious story of Billy is very interesting, read in one sitting. But it's still sad and scary. Just imagine that your body is controlled by 23 more personalities - and all this is outside your awareness. You don’t understand what happened to you the whole time you were “sleeping.” Even when one person can observe the actions of another, it is even more terrible, because you do not control anything and observe your actions as if from the side and through a fog. Daniel Keyes was amazing at describing everything - you can easily imagine these 24 personalities, each with their own experiences and views on life.

Kevin. One of Billy Milligan's personalities: “We know that a world without pain is a world without feelings... but a world without feelings is a world without pain.”

P.S. After the book was published, in 1991 Milligan was declared “in one piece” and released. In the 90s, he made films, painted pictures, studied programming, physics, and mathematics. He was a genius, but he was still a split personality (as he himself admitted). So I wonder what’s wrong with him now? What is he like now? They say that nothing has been heard about him and his exact location is unknown.

Work on the film "The Crowded Room" about the life of Billy Milligan has been constantly suspended and there is no reliable information about whether it will even be released. Something incredible and mysterious is constantly happening around this man.

Try to isolate your first memory. How old are you? Three years, five years? Many of us don't remember anything until we're three years old, and others even longer. Why does this happen and why do we remember so little about our childhood? I tried to figure it out.

Guitar, mushroom and milk soup

One of my friends told me about his first memories: he was lying in a cradle, he was a year and a half old, and a guitar was hanging above him. When he grew up and asked his parents about this guitar, they were very surprised, because at that age no one usually remembers himself. By the way, the young man was a musician. Maybe the first memory of the guitar influenced him that way?

I myself can’t figure out what my very first memory is. Here I am walking with my grandmother on a summer day through the village. I remember the houses, the lake, the sun. In hand - big mushroom which I brag about. I'm three years old. Or I sit on my mother’s lap while visiting. I remember a table with food and drinks and a man with a camera. Later I will find these photographs in the family album. Or I look down from the balcony (we lived on the fifth floor). Feeling of fear and height. But I can’t name a specific first memory.

I ask my friend. She also cannot name any specific childhood episode.

I remember how, when I was 4 years old, I asked about soup in kindergarten to see if I wanted to have lunch. They told me that today is milk day. And I said something like: “Well, then I’ll have lunch,” she says.

By the way, Leo Tolstoy described his first memories in sufficient detail. Maybe such ability is a sign of genius?

These are my first memories, ones that I don’t know how to put in order, not knowing what happened before and after. I don’t even know about some of them, whether it was in a dream or in reality. Here they are. I'm tied up, I want to free my hands, but I can't do it. I scream and cry, and I myself hate my screaming, but I can’t stop. Someone is standing over me, bent over, I don’t remember who, and all this is in semi-darkness, but I remember that there are two, and my scream affects them: they are alarmed by my scream, but they do not untie me, what I want, and I scream even louder. It seems to them that this is necessary (that is, for me to be tied up), whereas I know that this is not necessary, and I want to prove it to them, and I burst into screams, disgusting to myself, but uncontrollable. I feel the injustice and cruelty not of people, because they pity me, but of fate and pity for myself.

It's funny. Why did the brain leave these particular memories and how did they affect us? I’ll try to figure out why we completely forget everything that happened before the age of three (and some even begin to recall memories from the age of five).

Society and brain features

The inability to store memories from early childhood is commonly referred to as infantile amnesia. The term appeared thanks to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who coined the term “infantile amnesia” more than a hundred years ago. Here are the main points modern science to this problem.

Neural connections

Interestingly, all scientists indicate that children in infancy can effectively use memory and other cognitive functions. Every second, a baby forms 700 new neural connections and uses language learning skills that would be the envy of any polyglot. Even before the end of the first year of life, infants use top-down attention for visual search and also replenish lexicon during sleep. And some studies indicate that a child begins to train his brain in the womb.

An explanation for infantile amnesia may lie in the fact that in childhood, neurons in the brain are intensively replaced and new neural connections are formed. Such complex processes actually erase memory. During adulthood, the death and formation of new nerve cells slows down significantly (but does not stop completely). Therefore, we best remember what happened to us as adults, when all the same neurons with the same connections are used.

Features of our memory

The answer to this can be found in the work of the 19th-century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who conducted a number of pioneering studies on himself to reveal the limits of human memory. Through a series of experiments, he found that a person forgets what he has learned amazingly quickly. Without much effort, the human brain sifts out half of all new knowledge within an hour. By the end of the month, a person remembers only 2-3% of what he learned. Perhaps, during the period of mastering the most important skills, we forget everything that is not essential, concentrating on the skills that will ensure our survival in the future?

Society's attitude

Psychologist Qi Wang from Cornell University (USA) was also interested in this topic. She collected hundreds of memories in Chinese and American students to establish the nature of this phenomenon. An interesting fact emerged: the Americans had longer stories, while the Chinese spoke more concisely and with an emphasis on facts. In general, Chinese students' childhood memories began six months later. During the analysis, she found that if memories of childhood were vague, then the parents and culture were to blame. If society lets you know that these memories are important to you, you will keep them. The scientist found that memories begin to form first among young representatives of the New Zealand Maori people, who are characterized by great attention to the past. Many people remember what happened to them when they were only two and a half years old.

Language

Some psychologists believe that events begin to be stored in a person’s memory only after he has mastered speech. Language helps us structure our memories, putting them into narrative form. Therefore, when we master language skills, it becomes easier for us to remember the past. But many psychologists are skeptical about this theory, since children who, for example, are born deaf or grow up without knowing the language, remember themselves from about the same age.

Another interesting thing about first memories is our ability to make them up. We can allegedly remember those memories that either never happened to us, or we can reconstruct events from the stories of loved ones.

People can pick up ideas and begin to visualize them, making them indistinguishable from memories, says researcher Elizabeth Loftes.

A recent study by British scientists confirms this feature. Researchers asked more than six thousand volunteers different ages talk about their first memory and found that almost 40 percent of them occurred before the age of three. According to the authors of the work published in the journal Psychological Science, at this age, episodic memory memories are not yet formed, from which we can conclude that they are fictitious..