Nichevo, Tovarish

For generations large-familied Russians have repeated a proverb: V tesnote, da Ne V Obide (Crowding is no discomfort). Veronika, a Moscow glovemaker, remembered it as she got up from her narrow bed, stumbled over her sleeping daughters and lit a fire in the little iron pechka in the center of the tiny room. It was below freezing in the room, water had to be left dripping to keep the pipes from freezing and on this, the first day of 1943, Veronika Popova, Russia's Jane Smith, dressed quickly, repeating to herself a newer Russian proverb: Nichevo, Tovarish (Everything's Fine, Comrade).

Veronika lit her improvised lamp--a cup of kerosene with a twisted thread for a wick--and made breakfast: water-thin gruel, black bread and brick tea brewed on the pechka. When it was ready she woke 16-year-old Grusha, fed her and, with an endearing Nichevo, sent her off to work in a war plant. Eight-year-old Fanya tied her ragged valenkis on her feet and went off to school. "Nichevo, Mama, I am not very hungry," she said.

There was no letter from her husband, but Nichevo, he had everything he needed at the front.

Veronika banked the pechka and set to work making gloves for the Red Army. Her factory had been bombed and she worked at home. By midmorning it grew light and she blew out the lamp. It grew warmer, too, and she could no longer see her breath as she stitched quickly, trying to keep up with the new high norms. In past years there had been a New Year's fir tree and presents for the children.

Christmas,*the old Russian Christmas, was coming in a week, but there would be no celebration. It was a bleak new year that Veronika and nearly 200 million other Soviet citizens faced--cold, hunger and suffering.

There were many reasons why all the Veronikas of Moscow and their families had no light, no heat, little food and endless work. Russia had lost: >Five million men, killed or maimed. A territory larger than France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined, inhabited by some 77 million people, of whom roughly 39 million, mostly men, were evacuated and resettled. >Sixty percent of the country's pre-war iron & coal output.

But Veronika and millions of her fellow countrymen knew why the Red Armies were relatively well supplied and were winning victories. Veronika knew that: >Much of Soviet industry had been evacuated to the Urals and Siberia, where it was producing more tons of products than all Soviet pre-war industry. >In Magnitogorsk a giant new blast furnace had been blown in, a strange, but fitting, Christmas present from the Russian people to themselves. >Baku oil production was 40% above 1941.

Most important of all, Veronika believed that 1943 would bring victory and peace. The heat would be turned on, the pechka would disappear, the old man would come home, Grusha would go back to school. What else would happen Veronika did not know, nor did she much care. That was enough to think about.

*Jan. 7 because of the 14-day time lag in the old Russian calendar.

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