But I decided to finish my story about the Party membership card… “So, there was no decision after the Party Commission in the Moscow Military District. The Party Commission of the land forces was inquiring into it, and were at a loss.”
“And then what?”
“Then there was a Party Board session in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, chaired by Shkiryatov — the head of Party Control. We were living in Obukhovo by then. The Board consisted of thirty men, if not more. In front of me the Chairman advised this Board that I had parachuted from my plane to the Germans… with a mission [from them]! I stood up and shouted: “Lies!” Everyone looked at me as if at a sworn enemy… In a word, they decided in the Central Committee: ‘You will receive a verdict in the Noginskiy District Party Committee at your place of residence’.”
“And what was the verdict?” My comrades asked in one voice.
“It was clear ‘Refusal of reinstatement as a Party member’. But I was pleased even with this verdict. They might have put me behind bars! They could have done anything… And I had already had two kids then.”
“And after that you sat as quiet as a mouse?”
“No, not at all. A year later I wrote another letter to the Party Central Committee, although all my friends and acquaintances were talking me out of it. ‘What do you need all this for?’ my husband was saying too. ‘Take care of your health, to raise our sons!’
And then they summoned me to the Party Central Committee again. There was another Party investigator this time — KGB Colonel Leonov. He received me very civilly: seated me on a couch, sat down next to me, showed me photographs of his two daughters, asked me about my husband and children. And then he began to question me on how I had found myself in German captivity.
‘Is it all really true?’ The Colonel wondered then. ‘Just yesterday an airman was sitting here and telling me he was as clean as a new pin, and at that time in my desk there were documents that discredited him.’
‘I am confident, Comrade Colonel, that in your desk there are no documents discrediting my name!’ I said sharply.
‘Alright, you may go now. Now wait to be summoned to the Party Board of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.’
This time the Party Board was very formidable — about twenty-five men. My thanks to Colonel Leonov: he reported everything honestly. And such was the verdict: ‘Taking into account her services to the motherland, she may join afresh in accordance with standard procedure’. Finding out about such a resolution of my case, people began to send and bring me recommendations: Dyachenko, the former head of the Political Department of the 197th Division; the Chief-of-Staff of our 805th Ground Attack Regiment Colonel Yashkin; the senior surgeon of the local hospital in Obukhovo — a Communist since 1917 who had done 10 years in the camps as an ‘enemy of the people’ and been exonerated during Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’; Leonov and many others… But I was obstinate again and didn’t want to join the Party afresh. And on top of that the Poles sent me the ‘Silver Cross of Merit’ which I had been awarded in May 1945. The Awards Department of the Ministry of Defence found me and handed over their debt — the Order of The Great Patriotic War, 1st Class…
The kids grew up healthy, but I was sick very often back then, so my ‘menfolk’ learned to do everything themselves at home. Igor would go shopping, Petya would do the housework and cook lunches. Vyacheslav Arsenievich had already written two books: ‘The Sturmoviks’ and ‘Comrades Airmen’.
“After the XX Party Congress181, I wrote to the Party Central Committee again”, I went on. “I requested justice be done. They replied very quickly with a phone calclass="underline" ‘Your letter has been received. When will you be able to come and see us?’ I replied that my son had a cold and I was unable to come for now.’
‘Write down our phone number. When you have a chance to come — give us a ring, we’ll order you a pass.’
On the second day I couldn’t restrain myself and rang them up myself. “Come to Moscow”, they answered, “to the Staraya Square, 4”, and they gave me the entrance number, telling me the floor and the office…
I went. They received me very civilly again, but I kept my ears pricked. First they asked me about home, family, how my medical treatment was going, enquired about many other matters. Then they asked a short question: “Do you feel hard done by?”
“It would be quite an underestimation to put it that way…”
“Well, Comrade Egorova Anna Alexandrovna, we will be reinstating you as a Party Member… You will have to come to the Party Board once again.”
“No, I won’t do that! There have already been two trials, a just one and an unjust one!” — and I told them about Shkiryatov’s ‘Star Chamber’.
“It’ll be a formality”, they said gently. “There will only four or five people. A verdict in your presence is required — and that will be it.”
“Alright then, I’ll be there.”
When I arrived and saw in reception the former head of the Political Department of the 197th Ground Attack Division Ivan Mironovich Dyachenko, by whose orders his deputy had taken away from me my Party membership card, I felt ill at ease. But I saw that for some reason Dyachenko’s hands and legs were trembling. I began to calm him down as best I could, and at that moment they called us to the Boardroom.
As they had told me, only five people were present from the Board, and two of us. The Chairman of the Board Shvernik asked Dyachenko to explain how Egorova had managed to preserve her Party membership card in the Hitlerite hell and then he had taken it away from me.
Ivan Mironovich stood up and began to say confusedly that a mission had been set up, that Egorova had led into action 15 Sturmoviks escorted by 10 fighters… The Chairman interrupted him and demanded: “Keep it short, answer my question!”
Dyachenko began to talk about my sorties again, but at that point Shvernik stopped him loudly:
“Enough! You may go.”
Ivan Mironovich went out, and Shvernik, addressing the Board members, said that he had spoken to Marshal S. I. Roudenko in whose Army Egorova fought in the last stage of the war, and the latter had given me a good reference: “Egorova fought honourably!” And he went on:
“Comrade Egorova, we reinstate you in the Party. Your length of service is preserved. You will be paying your dues from the day the Noginskiy raikom182 of the Party hands over your new Party membership card. Unfortunately we are unable to have it done by the October celebrations — only five days are left…”
After the meeting with my comrades-in-arms Captains Andrey Konyakhin and Leva Kabisher I began to receive letters from my regimental comrades. Our former commissar Dmitriy Polikarpovich Shvidkiy sent me a letter as well. He said he was living in Kharkov, worked at a tractor plant and was looking for the document in which he and former head of the Corps Political Department Colonel Tourpanov had recommended I be awarded the Golden Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. Then the commissar ‘reported’ that they had already written to many authorities and even to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. At the end of the letter Shvidkiy asked me if I had seen the movie ‘Clear Sky’, directed by G. Choukhray, and advised me to be sure to see it, for this movie was about my fate and that of people like me.
In those months I got many letters form my regiment comrades, and they all advised me to see ‘Clear Sky’. “What kind of movie is it?” I thought and at last went to see it. I remember watching it and weeping, and my sons, sitting next to me, were urging me in whispers so as not to disturb the other viewers: “Mummy, stop crying. It’s only a movie, those are actors…”
181
Translator’s note — held in 1956, Stalin’s ‘excesses’ were condemned there for the first time.