The Break. The Last Bow

Among Astafyev’s most important themes are war and village life. One of his first works was a school essay, which later the writer turned into the story “Vasyutkino Lake.” The first short stories by the author were published in the journal “Smena.” Most of the stories he wrote for children were included in the collection “The Last Bow.”

Astafyev’s narrative style conveys the view of an ordinary soldier or junior officer. In his works, he created a literary image of a common working man of war—an impersonal “Vanka” from the platoon—on whom the entire army depends, and on whom, in the end, “all dogs are hung” and every sin is blamed; he is avoided by awards, but punishments come to him in abundance. This half-autobiographical, half-collective image of a trench-front soldier living one life with his combat comrades—and accustomed to looking death calmly in the eye—Astafyev largely took from himself and his front-line friends, opposing him to rear-dwellers who opportunistically profited from the war and were present in large numbers throughout it in the comparatively safer front-adjacent zone—toward whom the writer felt a profound contempt until the end of his days.

Astafyev’s books were extremely popular in the USSR and abroad due to their vivid literary language and realistic depiction of wartime life; as a result, they were translated into many languages and published in multi-million print runs.