Goodbye, Boys!

8 hrs. 16 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Boris Balter

Narrator Elizaveta Krupina

Description

Writer and translator Boris Balter was born on July 6, 1919, in Samarkand. His family had moved there from Kyiv, escaping a pogrom. Balter left a highly colorful portrait of his father: “My father was a remarkable man. A blue-eyed giant with wheat-colored mustaches. During the Russo-Japanese War he was an artilleryman; when the entire gun crew was killed, he alone turned the cannon and shot down the attacking Japanese at point-blank range. For courage and valor my father was awarded soldiers’ St. George Crosses—the highest military decoration in the Russian army… My father saved my mother and all her numerous relatives from the pogrom. In gratitude, she married him, though she was thirty years younger.” At 19, B.I. Balter graduated from military school and was immediately sent to the Finnish War. He was wounded. Then came the Great Patriotic War. At 23, he commanded a regiment. At 27, he was discharged from the army for health reasons. Balter dedicated his best and most famous book, “Goodbye, Boys,” to K.G. Paustovsky. People started talking about Balter. The novella immediately won over readers. Everyone read it and discussed it. Mikhail Kalik made a magnificent film, and a production starring Olga Yakovleva in the leading role was staged at the Lenin Komsomol Moscow Theater.