The name Vasily Zaytsev will be familiar to many readers thanks to the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates. Yet many parts of the story it portrays are fictitious, aside from the fact that Jude Law, tall and lean, bears no resemblance to man he plays. (The real-life Zaytsev had a stocky build.) According to the film, Zaytsev learned to shoot on wolf hunts with his grandfather. But as he told historians, he acquired his skills while hunting squirrels with his father, mother, brother, and sister. The goal was to shoot as many squirrels as his mother needed to make a fur coat for his sister. In the film, Zaytsev is “discovered” by a commissar, who feeds tales of the sniper’s accomplishments to the army newspaper. But the real Zaytsev was not discovered by a commissar; he followed the example of other Stalingrad snipers whose kill totals were widely publicized within the Red Army. Finally the film leads us to believe that the Germans, after repeatedly failing to kill Zaytsev, sent in their most experienced sniper, Major Erwin König, to go head-to-head with the Russian marksman amid the rubble of the Tractor factory. While Zaytsev claimed to wage a three-day duel with a German master sniper he referred to as “Major Koning,” there is no evidence that a sharpshooter by this name ever existed.124
Consistent with comments by Major Aksyonov mentioned above, the sniper movement in Stalingrad began during the heaviest fighting in October 1942. The use of snipers, like shock troops, was among tactics the 62nd Army command preferred in street fighting. The snipers in the regiment of Guards Lieutenant Colonel Metelyov, of the 284th Rifle Division, caused quite a sensation. According to Aksyonov, forty-eight snipers in the regiment killed 1,278 Germans.
The first sniper to make a name for himself in the regiment was Alexander Kalentyev. He had been trained as a sniper but worked as a liaison officer in the regimental staff. In a conversation with an army newspaper at the beginning of October, he explained that the widely published deeds of other Soviet snipers inspired him to follow suit. He approached the main line of battle and “killed ten Fritzes, my first pack of ten.” Kalentyev announced that he would multiply his total by November 7, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution.125 He managed to kill twenty-four enemy soldiers before a German sniper bullet struck and killed him.126 From the Main Political Administration Kalentyev and other Red Army soldiers on the Stalingrad Front received small journals for recording the number of soldiers they killed and the amount of equipment they destroyed. On the title page of each journal stood the words of Ilya Ehrenburg: “Unless you’ve killed at least one German in a given day, your day has been wasted.”127
During October sniper propaganda spread. Notable snipers vowed publicly to up their kills in honor of the anniversary of the revolution. Army leadership encouraged them to train other soldiers and create a sniper movement.128 Newspapers routinely published the snipers’ totals. An article from October 21 had as its headline nothing more than “66” printed in bold; it called for a “socialist competition” on the occasion of the upcoming anniversary. One headline pointedly asked, “Sniper Sytnikov has killed eighty-eight Germans. What about you?” Soldiers who had yet to make a kill were publicly shamed.129 The campaign proceeded in the style of 1930s shock work. Sytnikov mentioned that before the war he had been active in the Stakhanovite movement as a miner. When he heard about the competition for the anniversary celebration, he thought he could follow the Stakhanovites’ example and exceed his previous kill targets.130 In the 1930s the Stakhanovites were celebrated as “excellent people” (znatnye lyudi) of the new socialist era. A variation stuck in Stalingrad: any sniper with more than forty kills was considered an “excellent shooter.”131
The political apparatus not only prodded soldiers to distinguish themselves in “socialist competitions” but also fanned the flames of hatred toward the Germans. The hate they cultivated bore much fruit. In his interview Aksyonov commented that every soldier and commander in Stalingrad “burned” to kill as many Germans as possible. He believed that this hate was the foundation for the sniper movement in the 284th Rifle Division. Anatoly Chekov, a sniper in the 13th Guards Division, made it clear in his October 1942 interview with Vasily Grossman that hatred was what drove him. Chekov recalled his feelings after he shot his first German: “I felt terrible: I had killed a man! But then I thought back to our own dead and started slaughtering them without mercy. [ . . . ] I have become a beastly man: I am killing them, hating them as if my entire life is supposed to be like that. I have killed forty people—three in the chest, the rest in the head.”132 Zaytsev too reported that his main driving force was hate.
Zaytsev’s name first appeared in the army newspaper on November 2. He was described as a new arrival on the Stalingrad Front who quickly became one of the most accurate marksmen in the army, someone who sets off “each morning at dawn to ‘hunt Fritzes.’” It approvingly cited his kill total—116 Germans dead—and the fact that he took other soldiers under his wing.133 Four days later, with the upcoming anniversary of the revolution in view, the newspaper reported that Zaytsev already had 135 kills. It also recorded the totals of his students who fulfilled “their obligations honorably”: one had killed twenty Germans; another, twenty-five; a third, thirty-three.134 After the anniversary, the newspaper urged the snipers to continue their “fierce competition” with unabated force.135
By the time the battle of Stalingrad was over, Zaytsev had killed 242 Germans, more than any other sniper in the 62nd Army.136 On January 15, 1943, he suffered an eye injury and spent three weeks in a military hospital. On February 22, while visiting an eye specialist in Moscow, Zaytsev learned that he was to be honored as Hero of the Soviet Union. Before the award ceremony—President Mikhail Kalinin would confer the title in the Kremlin on February 26—he received a letter from Professor Mints inviting him to the Institute for the Study of the Great Patriotic War. Zaytsev thought he had to deliver a lecture on the sniper movement in Stalingrad and was nervous when he arrived poorly prepared, especially because the editor in chief of Pravda, Pyotr Pospyelov, was present. As he wrote in his memoirs: “I’m answering questions, talking about my comrades, without looking in my notebook where the theses of only the first part of the report are. An hour passes by, then another. I start wondering why no one is asking me to begin my lecture. Finally, they come to the conclusion that my report has scientific value. I am dumbfounded: what value, I haven’t read out a single thesis from my notebook!”137
Because no stenographer was on hand to record the interview with Mints, Zaytsev was invited to the institute again in April 1943, when the following transcript was produced.138 In August 1943 a supplementary interview took place. A revised text of the interview was published the same year in brochure form.139 Zaytsev’s testimony is the only eyewitness account of the battle published by the Historical Commission. There are considerable differences between the published and unpublished versions of the interview. The brochure’s editors abridged or reworked many passages without indicating the changes. They either embellished or eliminated sections in which Zaytsev came across as less than heroic. For instance, in the original interview Zaytsev claimed to shoot his first German soldier at a distance of 250 feet. In the brochure it became 2,500 feet. Or consider Zaytsev’s standoff with the German sniper (the climactic scene in Enemy at the Gates). In Zaytsev’s telling, he shot his opponent after he had put down his weapon. The brochure portrays the episode differently: the armed German “loses his head” when Zaytsev jumps out of the ditch and fells him with “holy Russian bullets.”140
Zaytsev continued to fight on the front for the duration of the war. By the time he saw Berlin, he had attained the rank of captain. After the war he headed a sewing machine factory in Kiev. He died there in 1991. In 2006, in accordance with his wishes, his body was moved from Kiev and interred in a grave on Mamayev Kurgan.
The high reverence the Red Army paid to its snipers did not extend to enemy snipers, who were regarded as mass murderers; those captured were separated from the other prisoners and executed.141 Consider what happened when Colonel Ivan Burmakov, supervising the capture of 71st Infantry Division staff on January 31, 1943, granted Fritz Roske’s request to be allowed to say good-bye to his officers:
His commanders were coming up to him, he was kissing them all and shaking hands. Suddenly an unsightly, sniveling Fritz came up. Here the gesture actually was on Roske’s part. Ilchenko was standing next to me. [Lieutenant Fyodor Ilchenko spoke German and acted as a translator.] So that German comes up. Roske is shaking his hand, kissing him. I ask who that is. Roske replies that it is the best machine gunner in his army who has killed 375 Russians. As soon as I heard “375 Russians” I surreptitiously stepped on the foot of Ilchenko, who was standing next to me. So that sniveling Fritz had barely left the basement before he was done in, before he could take aim at number 376.
COMMISSION ON THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
Transcript of interview with comrade V. G. ZAYTSEV
April 12, 1943
Interview conducted by comrade Krol,142 commission research assistant
Stenography by comrade Roslyakova
Vasily Grigorievich ZAYTSEV: Hero of the Soviet Union, Expert sniper143
I was born into a peasant family on April 23, 1915, in the village of Yeleninksky, which is in the Agapov district of the Chelyabinsk region. My father was a forester. Until 1929 I was raised in the forest. I spend my entire childhood in the forest. There I learned how to shoot, and I hunted rabbits, squirrels, foxes, wolves, wild goats. I probably love the forest so much because I spent my entire childhood in the forest. Which means that I’ve never been lost in a forest, even if it was one I’d never been to. I’ve never gotten lost. In 1929 my father joined a collective farm. I went there with my parents to our village, Yeleninsky. [ . . . ] In the summer I tended cattle, I was a herdsman. The Construction Technical School was in Magnitogorsk. I was getting ready to go there at the same time. I still hadn’t made up my mind where to study. I’d only decided that I must study something. I wasn’t all that interested in construction, but I did want to learn. I was embarrassed to be tending cattle. But I kept doing it and went to school at the same time. I’d let in the cows and tie the horse on a long rope. Then I’d sit under a bush to study. I spent the summer of 1929 tending cattle, and that winter I began my studies at the Construction Technical School. If someone had asked me where I wanted to go, I’d have told them straight out that I wanted to go to the aviation institute. I wanted to be a pilot, but these days both my health and my vision are shot. So in 1930 I entered the Construction Technical School. I was an excellent student. In my second and third years I received prizes. My overall grade when I left was “excellent.” I graduated from there in 1932. When I was young I was so small, so skinny and weak. While I was at that school we built the first and second blast furnaces in Magnitogorsk. I built blast and puddling furnaces. And I worked there as a trainee. The workers were old. They had no sense of the theory, but they had a lot of experience. You’d be giving them instructions, and they’d say: “You’re just a kid—I’ve been doing this my entire life, and here you are telling me what to do.” I didn’t like that. It made me feel bad, so I left. I’d been working there three months. Plus it was dirty work. It was hot, and you had to wear all those hot clothes. I started a bookkeeping course. In Shadrinsk I completed a nine-month course to become a bookkeeper. When I finished, they sent me to the Kizilsky district of the Chelyabinsk region. From 1933 I worked as a bookkeeper for the Kizilsky region Community of Consumer Cooperatives. I liked this careful, exacting work. I was a bookkeeper there until 1936. [ . . . ] I enlisted in the military through the Komsomol and joined the Pacific Fleet. I’d been a Komsomol member since technical school. In February 1937 I joined the Pacific Fleet. [ . . . ] Our unit was based in Vladivostok. It’s a unique city, in the mountains. When you compare Vladivostok to Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Shadrinsk, or Tyumen, it seems rather unpleasant. It’s not a clean place. There are lots of Chinese, Koreans. I didn’t really like them at first, but after I’d spent some time there I got used to the city, got used to the navy, and now I miss the Far East terribly. I’d jump at the chance to serve in any tundra in the Far East. I just love the region. The surroundings are beautiful there, and the city itself is great, I really came to like it. Of course it’s a harsh climate, but I loved that city. If I’m still alive after the war I’ll definitely go serve in the Far East, although they send you back from there after six years, and I’ve already lived there seven years.
By order of the Military Council of the Pacific Fleet, those who graduated with top marks from the Military Supply School were given the rank of quartermaster-technician, 2nd class. This order was communicated via telegraph, and the written document was meant to come later. I had the job and standing of a midgrade officer, but I was still a regular seaman. They put me in charge of a department. I was made a bookkeeper in the 4th Submarine Brigade in Vladivostok. From 1939 to March 1941 I served as a bookkeeper with the rank of quartermaster-technician 2nd class. But when they started looking into promotions, it turned out that my rank hadn’t actually been properly recorded. It turned out that the order from the People’s Commissariat giving me the rank of quartermaster-technician 2nd class was never issued. This upset me, and it was only the beginning of a lot of red tape. I’d been a midgrade officer for six months, and now I was just a regular seaman. Throughout my service I’d never had so much as one disciplinary action, not from the party, the Komsomol, or the service. The Military Council had expressed its gratitude for my work. I’d done nothing wrong the entire time, I had done my job with exceptional discipline. They reached their conclusion: I was to turn in my officer’s uniform and go back to wearing that of a simple seaman. Orders are orders. They denied my request, put me back to barracks, and extended my term of service. I wrote a letter to comrade Stalin. Fifteen days later I got a reply. The reply, written on behalf of comrade Stalin, said: investigate this and file a report. Then everything was sorted out quickly and I was given the status of an extended service man. I was taken from an ordinary seaman and given the grade of a reenlistee with ten years’ worth of service. [ . . . ]
When the Germans began their approach to Stalingrad, we petitioned the Military Council to allow Komsomol sailors to go voluntarily to defend Stalingrad. I volunteered for Stalingrad. [ . . . ] Our unit was formed in Krasnoufimsk that September. On September 6, 1942, we arrived in Krasnoufimsk. On the 7th we were transferred straight from one troop train to the next before leaving for Stalingrad. There were a lot of men on the train, around five thousand of us. In Krasnoufimsk we were assigned to Batyuk’s division, back when it was a regular rifle division. We received our training on the way there, in the railcars. Here’s how I learned to use a machine gun: I put a machine gun on an upper bunk and had a machine gunner tell me about it, show me how it works. I was a commander and he was a soldier, but he was the one teaching me. There I was made the commander of a supply platoon, but I turned that down to be a regular soldier, a rifleman. I picked up a gun and went as a rifleman. I had been a very good shot even while I was still in the navy.
We arrived in Stalingrad on September 21–22. On September 20–21 we were in Burkovka. At that time all of Stalingrad was burning. From morning until 7:00 P.M. there were air battles between our planes and the enemy’s. One after another planes crashed and burned. The whole city was on fire. From the other side of the Volga you could see the flames, the tongues of flame that all merged together to form one enormous ball of fire. The wounded walked and crawled. They were being transported across the Volga. Seeing all this has a profound effect on a new arrival. It filled us with hatred and rage.
We’d already cleaned our weapons and fixed bayonets. We were just waiting, waiting impatiently. We were on full alert. We were carrying our ammunition, mortars, machine guns. We arrived at the Volga in secret and crossed on the night of September 21–22. We were given a representative from a Guards division, but I can’t remember which one. After we crossed the Volga, we were standing on the riverbank. The Germans were already in the city by then. They spotted us at 6:00 A.M. and attacked with heavy mortar fire. There were twelve fuel tanks. We occupied the area around them. We took those twelve fuel tanks. Then sixty enemy aircraft flew in and started attacking us. They blew up the tanks, and we got covered in gasoline. We fell back to the Volga, where we dunked ourselves in the water as we ripped off all our burning clothes. We were left only in our undershirts. Some were even naked, and some covered themselves with their tarps. With rifles at the ready, we went on the attack. We forced the Germans out of the factory area, from the Metiz factory and the meatpacking plant. There we dug in. After a while the Germans attacked, but we held back every one of their assaults.
After those early battles the battalion commander took me on as his adjutant. I was the adjutant to the battalion commander, his right-hand man. During the fighting our battalion was scattered, and the Germans managed to disrupt our combat formations. The battalion commander ordered me to gather our men together and contact him. I had my own adjutant, and the two of us began gathering the men and putting the companies back together. We could only account for around seven men in each company. Later, when we were done, there were around sixty or seventy in each of the companies. We organized our battle formations. One of our units was getting held up in the Long Ravine and had begun to retreat. I went over there with my orderly. The battalion commander gave me orders to keep the enemy at bay and hold the line. I followed his orders and held the line. We attacked, repelled the Germans, and straightened out the line. We stalled the German advance. After those battles, when we were on the defensive, command nominated me for the Medal for Valor. On October 23, 1942, I received the Medal for Valor.
The Germans started sending out snipers to pin down our movements. Once I was with the battalion commander, Captain Kotov, and we saw this German jump out. He gives me an order: “There’s a German over there: kill him.” I bring up my rifle, fire, and the German drops. About eighty meters, and I killed him with an ordinary rifle. People got pretty excited. Everyone knew me there, and I already had a lot of authority over the men. They joked about it, but they were impressed. We could see another one coming out to help the first. The one I’d killed was probably carrying a message. Someone yelled: “Zaytsev, Zaytsev, there’s another one coming, get that one too.” I brought up my rifle, shot—and he fell. That’s two of them in the space of half an hour. I was beginning to like this. I stood at the window and looked. Another German was crawling out to the two dead men. I shot and killed him.
The sniper Vasily Zaytsev (right) and his students move into an ambush position in Stalingrad, December 1942
Two days later I got my own sniper rifle with a telescopic sight. Captain Kotov gave it to me on behalf of the regimental commander, Colonel Metelyov. I started learning how to shoot with this rifle. We had one sniper in our regiment, Alexander Kalentyev. He helped me get to know this sniper rifle. I went around with Kalentyev for three days, observing his movements, seeing how he worked with his rifle. Lieutenant Vasily Bolsheshchapov helped me learn the mechanical aspects of the rifle. After that I began staging ambushes and was having a lot of success. Operating on my own would make it easier to keep tabs on the Germans. On top of that, there were a lot of people hunting for me. The Germans already knew who I was.
I decided to recruit more snipers and train them. Since I was killing three or four Germans every day, I started looking for students. I took on five or six students. We had lessons in a forge. They learned the mechanical aspects of the rifle in a ventilation pipe at the Metiz factory. We’d get to the forge, I’d show them how to shoot, and then we’d go out to lie in wait for the enemy. I recruited about thirty students altogether. Once I was convinced they could handle their weapons skillfully, I’d take them with me on an ambush—one, two, three days. These people got used to shooting. They studied the enemy’s defensive positions, his activities, and so on. I chose these people myself. They were my friends, and I loved them. We shared everything: sometimes we didn’t have much in the way of food, and you’d have to share whatever biscuits or tobacco you had. When people see that you are open and honest with them, they develop affection for you. I hope that if someone comes to love me, they won’t ever give up on me, and I won’t give up on them. I taught them to remember my every word. This is how I recruited and trained my students.
It’s not that difficult to assess someone’s fighting qualities at the front. A sniper has got to be daring, cold-blooded, and persistent; he must master his weapon, be a competent tactician, and have good eyesight. These are the qualities that determine whether someone can be a sniper. I taught them and went out with them on ambushes.
In one area, at Mamayev Kurgan, we needed to take this one bunker that was keeping us from moving around—crossing from one district to another, bringing out food and ammunition. Command gave us the task of taking this bunker. Our infantry had tried several times, but their attacks had failed. German snipers were in the area. I sent two snipers from my group, but they missed, got wounded, and were put out of action. The battalion commander ordered me to go there myself and take two other snipers with me. I set off. I encountered a skilled German sniper. I stuck a helmet out from a trench, and he shot it immediately. I had to work out where he was. This was very difficult to do because he’d shoot and kill you the moment you try to take a look. Which means you’ve got to trick him, outsmart him. That is, you’ve got to use the right tactics. I put my helmet on a parapet, he shoots, and the helmet goes flying. I hunted him for five hours. I had to resort to the following method. I took off one of my mittens, put it on a board, and stuck it up out of the trench. The German thinks that someone is putting his hands up in surrender, that he doesn’t want to fight. The German shoots. I take down the glove and see where it has been shot through. Based on the holes I work out where he’s shooting from. If the glove is shot from this side, that means he’s over here. If he’s somewhere else, then the glove has a hole on the other side. This shot indicated the direction he was shooting from. I grabbed a trench periscope and started looking. I found him. Our infantry was right on the front line. They’d only have to go thirty meters to reach that German bunker. I’d tracked him down. He got up to observe our infantry. To do this, he put down his rifle. Right then I popped out of the trench, shouldered my rifle, and shot. I got him. Then I opened fire on the embrasures in the bunker, where their machine guns were firing from. I started shooting at the embrasures to keep the machine gunners from getting to their guns. Then our infantry rushed the bunker. We took it without any losses.
Here there was only one good tactic: I had to outsmart my opponent. That kept us from losing anyone and let us achieve our objectives.
On one hill there was a company that had been cut off by German snipers and machine guns. It wasn’t easy getting there. Command was trying to find out where the enemy was hiding. They went out two or three times but couldn’t find them. Colonel Metelyov, our regimental commander, asked me to locate the enemy firing positions, find where the snipers were hiding, and clear the approach. I set off with two of my men, privates Nikolai Kulikov and Dvoyashkin. We left at 5:00 A.M., before dawn. During the day you can’t see the flashes, you can’t see where they’re shooting from, which is why you’ve got to work at night. We dropped into a trench, rolled a large cigarette, and made a kind of a cross out of sticks. Then we wrapped rags around it to produce something resembling a face. We gave him a helmet, stuck the lit cigarette in his mouth, put coat on, and showed him off. The German sniper sees a man smoking a cigarette. When someone shoots in the dark you can see the flash clearly. That’s how I was able to locate the German sniper. When Kulikov held up this stick decoy, the German started shooting at it. He’d shoot, Kulikov would lower it, and then he’d hold it back up again. The German would think he hadn’t got him, so he’d start shooting again. By that time I’d managed to pinpoint the locations of the German emplacement and the snipers. I wasn’t able to take out the snipers. I could only find out where they were. I got in touch with our antitank artillery. They destroyed the German bunkers and killed the snipers. That was how we got to the company that had been cut off.
You’ve got to be resourceful. You’ve got to find the right tactical approach to outwit the enemy. Killing him doesn’t take long. But outwitting him, thinking about how to get the better of him—that’s not so easy.
Here’s another example. We were trying to take this concrete bridge. After several attempts we still hadn’t succeeded. Our attacks had all gone wrong. I snuck off with a group of four snipers to the Germans’ flank. Actually, we slipped right through to his rear. We climbed up into the bombed-out buildings. When our guys started attacking, the Germans would run out and throw grenades. It was then, when they emerged from their cover, that we began picking them off. They spotted us and brought out one of their guns. We killed the whole crew. In about two hours the four of us killed twenty-eight Germans. That was on December 17, 1942. Our infantry managed to occupy that heavily fortified bridge. The bridge had withstood so many assaults, a lot of direct fire, but it couldn’t be destroyed. The concrete was around six meters thick. Hit it with a shell—and all you do is leave a dent in it.
Between October 5, 1942, and January 10, 1943, I had 242 dead Germans on my account. I had trained a total of thirty snipers. I had established a new movement, a sniper school. In the March 15, 1943, issue of Red Fleet there was an article by Guards Captain Aksyonov in which he described my work.
I’d gotten a lot of harassment in the navy. The conditions were just unbearable, and even wise people told me: “Zaytsev, if I were you, I’d shoot myself.” But I survived and loved the navy despite all the morons—they weren’t all that bad, but the quartermaster service really was completely full of morons.
Here’s another example. The Germans were bringing in reinforcements. I don’t remember the date, but by then I was already in a different regiment. I was there with some students. There were four others working in another district. I was at an observation post with the commander. A messenger shows up looking for me. He says: Comrade Zaytsev, German activity has been reported in such-and-so observation sector. They’re sending in reinforcements. I went out with my snipers to take a look at these reinforcements. I called up the other four, so that made six of us, counting me and my student. We ran over there, went into a bombed-out building, and ambushed the Germans as they were moving in formation. We let them come to about three hundred meters before we started shooting. It worked out perfectly. There were about ninety to a hundred of them. They weren’t expecting this. They didn’t know what was going on, and they stopped: first one drops, then a second, then a third. You need two seconds to shoot. Our SVT rifle holds ten rounds.144 All you do is squeeze the trigger and it loads the next round. In about half an hour the six of us killed forty-six Germans. That was my most memorable ambush. After we were finished, our artillery and mortars cleaned up the rest.
I remember this one interesting moment. The guys often laugh about this when we meet up. It was the first time I suffered a concussion. I’d climbed into a collapsed furnace. The building had burnt down, all that was left was this one furnace and a chimney. I’d climbed in and was shooting from inside it, but the Germans saw me, and then they hit the chimney with their mortars. I was buried under a pile of bricks, and my rifle was broken. I’d killed a lot of Germans from that furnace. When I got buried I was wearing large boots—size 45—and I couldn’t get up. My tarp, which had been torn in half, was wrapped around my feet. I pulled my feet out, but the boots stayed put. By the way, I’d been lying there unconscious for two hours. When I came to, I dug myself out from under the bricks and pulled my legs out, but those boots, like I said, stayed there in the furnace. I threw out all the bricks, thinking: “To hell with them if they kill me.” I slung the broken rifle around my neck, wrapped my feet in rags, grabbed the boots with my hands, and ran with no shoes down the alley. The men laugh about this. It would have made a fine photograph. For some reason the Germans didn’t shoot me.
Here’s another one. It was in the Long Ravine. The Germans had a kitchen there. In a cellar. It was evening, getting late, the sun had set. We were in this building having a smoke. And we see this big German come out from somewhere. They had these enormous insulated pots. The German comes out all in white—a cook, apparently—and he starts washing out the pot. It was a distance of about four hundred meters. He was right out in the open. Someone says: “Zaytsev, shoot him!” I raised my rifle, and just as he grabbed the pot by the rim to look inside I shot him in the head. His head went right into the pot as he dropped. The soldiers said: “The enemy has resorted to the use of tinpot weaponry.” We got a kick out of that.
I first started shooting when I was about twelve. I’ve still got one brother. When we were kids we hunted partridges, grouse. I was a good shot even as a kid. Our father taught us to shoot squirrels. He had us shoot them while they were jumping from one tree to the next. We went hunting a lot: my father, my mother, my sister, and my brother and me. It was fun. If you shoot a squirrel with a shotgun, you tear everything up and ruin the pelt. We had a sister, and me and my brother decided to kill enough squirrels to make her a fur coat.
But we had to shoot them with a single pellet, so we had to practice this art. We made our own pellets. They were similar in size with what you get in a small-caliber TOZ rifle.145 I was about twelve then. Once I’d gotten good at shooting, my father gave me a hunting rifle. But we still shot squirrels for our sister’s coat, about two hundred of them. My sister is older than me. My brother was born in 1918. My mother and sister could shoot too. My mother isn’t someone you want to mess with. The forest there was mostly pine with the occasional birch. I can shoot with either eye. The vision in my left eye is still good. My right eye’s not that great.
I was seriously wounded once. I’ve got a piece of shrapnel under my right eye, and another one near the corner of my eye, also on the right. The splinter under my right eye can’t be removed because it’s under the mucous membrane. It doesn’t bother me, but I see red circles when I look down and then back up again. There’s another splinter in my left eye. I couldn’t see much of anything for five days. My whole face got burned.
I did some hunting in the Far East. I hunted wild boars, bears, bison, lynx, wolves, foxes, pheasants. I was also a good shot in the military. I was a good shot as a kid, and so were my parents. I probably got it from them. My mother’s an old woman now, wears glasses, but she’ll still go out and shoot. A grouse will perch somewhere in a birch tree, and she comes out, takes a shot, and it’s dead. Then she goes home and plucks it.
I found out I was going to be made a Hero of the Soviet Union on February 23, 1943. I’d been called to see comrade Shcherbakov, the head of the Main Political Administration. When I got to his assistant, Captain Vedyukov, I still didn’t know about the award. When I got there they congratulated me. The decree granting me the award was made on February 22, 1943. On February 26 I received the Order of Lenin. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin handed it to me. Now I’m going to study in Solnechnogorsk.
Snipers usually hide out in buildings. When our forces were outside the city, we had to operate in the field. You’ve got to study the terrain in advance. You find out where the enemy will be and how he’ll get there, you locate the best place for an ambush, study the enemy’s defenses.
When you’re hunting for enemy officers or soldiers, you disrupt their activities, make it impossible for them to stand up or bring in ammunition, say, or food. You find out when they do these things. You get there and stay put, deciding which weapon would be a better choice: your submachine gun or your rifle. If there’s a lot of them, you won’t get everyone with the rifle, but with the submachine gun you can mow them all down. Sometimes you shoot from one position and then move to another. They start shooting back at your position, but you’re already gone, you’re somewhere else. You’ve always got to prepare several firing positions in advance. And make a lot of decoys to thoroughly confuse the enemy. He shoots but doesn’t hit the target. I would shoot, for example, from underneath a dead body. You can also shoot from behind rocks.
How was I wounded? I was lying in wait. The Germans spotted me. None of them could get me. I wasn’t letting any of their snipers get up. I was under a railcar. They decided to shoot at the car, hoping I’d be hit by some of the flying bits of metal, splinters, fragments, and so on. So that’s what they did. They fired directly at the car. Fragments from the car flew right at me. A shell exploded up above. My face was burned up, I had shrapnel wounds, all my clothing was torn, my knee was dislocated, and my right eardrum was ruptured. Basically, I was very seriously wounded.
Zaytsev is accepted as a candidate in the Communist party, Stalingrad, October 1942.
I joined the party in October 1942.146 There was one occasion when me and my men were surrounded. There’s the Volga, but you can’t get anything across. We were in an encirclement. No hope we’d make it. That’s what I was thinking, but I was in command and I couldn’t say that to the men. It was an extremely difficult situation. I was a chief petty officer at the time. After that first battle I received a government award, the Medal for Valor.
We were in a terribly difficult situation. We had a representative from the Red Army’s Main Political Administration.147 I told our commanders that there was “no land for the 62th Army on the other side of the Volga. This is our land, and we will defend and hold it.”
From six or seven in the morning until seven in the evening the Germans bombed and they bombed. There were [ . . . ] air raids every day. There was shelling and mortar fire. The six-barreled mortars rumbled all day without a break. Night bombers came after dark to drop more and more bombs. Is there any hope in such a situation? People are getting wounded, killed. But it’s a great time for storing up hatred. When you capture a German, you feel there’s nothing you couldn’t do to him—but he has value as an informant. You grudgingly lead him away.
While we were in the area of the Metiz factory the Germans dragged out this woman (to rape her, no doubt). A boy yelled out: “Mama, where are they taking you?” She shouted—not far from us—“Brothers, save me! Help me!” How does that affect you when there’s nothing you can do to save her? You’re on the front line. You don’t have enough men. If you rush out to help her you’ll be slaughtered, it’ll be a disaster. Or another time you see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. Does that get to you? That has a tremendous impact.
We didn’t know fatigue. Now I get tired just walking around town, but then we had breakfast around 4:00 to 5:00 A.M. and dinner around 9:00 to 10:00 P.M., going without food all day without getting tired. We’d go three or four days without sleeping, without even feeling sleepy. How can I explain this? You’re in a constant state of agitation, the whole situation is having a terrible effect on you. Every soldier, including myself, is thinking only of how he can make them pay more dearly for his life, how he could slaughter even more Germans. You think only of how to harm them even more, to spite them as much as you can. I was wounded three times in Stalingrad. Now I have a nervous system disorder and I’m shaking all the time. I find myself thinking about it a lot, and these memories have a strong effect.
I was a political group leader at the Voroshilov Battery and a bureau member in the Komsomol organization. I got good marks in the history of the party and in the history of the peoples of the USSR. I studied party history in 1939–1940. I enjoyed party history, but most of all I liked the history of the Civil War. I did a lot of reading. I read Furmanov’s Chapayev,148 read about Parkhomenko,149 Kotovsky,150 Suvorov,151 Kutuzov, the Brusilov Offensive.152 That was all while I was in the navy. I read Zazubrin’s Two Worlds,153 Bagration,154 Denis Davydov (the first partisan),155 Sergei Lazo—that was a big book.156 I really liked Stanyukovich’s sea stories157 and Stendal’s The Red and the Black. I’ve read Novikov-Priboy,158 War and Peace, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.159
Bookkeeping is good, calm, quiet work. It takes you into the depths of life. You feel like you’re in charge, that something depends on you. I like that. It’s independent work, and whatever you do, you must apply to your life.
General Chuikov and Commissar Gurov inspect Zaytsev’s sniper rifle. Photographer: Georgy Zelma
[ . . . ] Colonel Vedyukov arrived from the Main Political Administration. On the 23rd I was summoned to General [ . . . ]. There was to be a presentation.160 I was still in the field, lying in wait. I got word that I was being called in to receive a government award. Snipers and sailors were there with me. Everyone knew me. Word spread: Zaytsev was getting a government award. I asked my sailors: “Well, guys, anything for me to pass along?” We knew that Colonel Vedyukov was with us on the front line. I said: “What should I tell comrade Stalin from us Komsomol sailors? Colonel Vedyukov is here, he’ll be going to Moscow and will pass along the message.” They told me what to say.
I said: “All right, I’ll say—” And I told them.
“That’s right, off you go.”
Off I went—and soon enough it was all in the papers.
I joined the party during the most difficult period. In October the Germans wouldn’t let up. I already had some students then. I was always agitating for the party. I thought it was about time to get ready to join the party. They advised me to. I thought: How can I join the party when I don’t know the program? I read the program and wrote my application right there in a trench. Two days later I was summoned to a party commission. By then I’d killed sixty Germans. I’d been decorated. That was after the 23rd [of February].
Captain Zaytsev is congratulated by fellow soldiers on receiving his epaulets, February 1943.161
[ . . . ] Headquarters work is the worst thing in the army. I just got out of working as a quartermaster, and now I’m having to do the same sort of thing again. I thought: people are fighting. I wanted to do something so history would know that I existed; otherwise you live, trample the earth, and then everything goes dark.
You don’t have to use a sniper rifle. A sniper rifle has a telescopic sight with 4x magnification. But with an ordinary rifle, a distance of two hundred meters is still just two hundred meters. Your accuracy isn’t as good, but if you know how to shoot that doesn’t matter. I had thirty snipers but only eight sniper rifles. The rest used ordinary rifles. Say you’re in a city, inside a building, next to a small embrasure. With a scoped rifle you need a larger embrasure, and if the embrasure is large, then the enemy can see you. So there are times when it’s better just to use an ordinary rifle.