War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 710 A busy and boring day in the Stalin era

In the early morning of the next day, when Wei Ran sleepily got up from the single bed covered with a bearskin blanket under the urging of the biological clock, it was still pitch black outside the window.

Although I slept very comfortably in this warm living cabin last night, this is not Kaban Lake in Kazan after all. Going out for a run at this time may just catch up with the breakfast of the wolf pack.

It was rare to be able to sleep late, Wei Ran lay on the bed again after urinating.When he was woken up by Beria who was growling, it was already bright outside the window.

To appease the vigilant Beria, Wei Ran hid at the edge of the car window and looked out. Seeing that there was nothing unusual, he simply climbed the ladder beside the bed to open the skylight, and jumped directly from the roof to the car in front. He got into the driver's cab along the unlocked sunroof at the fastest speed, and started the transport vehicle directly.

When the roar of the engine sounded, four wolves also rushed out from under the chassis of the living cabin, and ran towards the abandoned building in the distance.

Wiping the cold sweat off his forehead, Wei Ran drove the transport vehicle closer to the buildings that he was going to search today, and then, like yesterday, he fired a series of bursts with a submachine gun at the outer walls of the abandoned buildings, and directly When the wolves ran into the forest again, he turned off the engine, returned to the living cabin and brought Beria down.

Thanks to this little guy's early warning, if he opened the living cabin rashly just now, even if it's not cold at this time, he still has to think about which hospital's plastic surgery department has the best technology.

Waiting patiently for Beria to finish defecating and urinating, Wei Ran took it back to the living cabin, added enough coal to the heating furnace to burn for a whole day, and then heated up the unfinished meal yesterday Hot counts as breakfast.

He didn't hold Beria until he was full, and continued to explore the remaining buildings.

The buildings were also emptied of everything as yesterday, and the stairs to the upper floors were also blown up.Of course, there are also a lot of animal droppings and bones, as well as the inevitable Stalin portrait in the conference room on the top floor of every building.

However, Wei Ran was not discouraged, and checked every room building by building and floor by floor as always.Finally, when he walked to a building on the edge of the building, which was the farthest from the pier and the closest to the coniferous forest, he finally made a different discovery.

Standing at the door of this building, Wei Ran frowned looking at the angle iron welded to the door frame.Even though the gates on the first floor of the dozens of buildings before were intact, there was no additional welding of crosspieces.

Not only that, although this building is the same as the previous ones, it has well-preserved windows as many as five or six floors.But only when you get close can you see that there is a wall behind all those windows!

Moreover, this wall is obviously not directly built into the inner window sill, but built on the floor of the room, with a distance of at least one meter from the window.

It is precisely because of this distance that people will not find anything abnormal if they look far away from the outside. Only when they are close, or even look in through the window, can they barely see the truth.

Without rushing to open the welded door on the first floor, Wei Ran walked around the building until he was sure he couldn't find any breakthrough, then turned his head and walked towards the transport vehicle.

Locking Beria in the living cabin, Wei Ran drove the transport vehicle, and directly pressed the front of the vehicle against the wall of the building just now, and then climbed up to the second floor by stepping on the roof of the vehicle.

To his surprise, when he smashed open the five or six cracked glass windows on the second floor, a brick wall also appeared inside!
The brick wall was in a U-shape, from the floor to the ceiling. I tried to pry the cement between the cracks of the wall with a bayonet, and then poked the still hard red brick.

Unfortunately, perhaps because of the nearly airtight environment here, after such a long time, the wall is still exceptionally strong, and he can't even find a gap through which light can penetrate.

"I've come all the way, can't I open you?" Wei Ran muttered cursingly, and jumped out of the window onto the transport truck.

Manipulating the transport vehicle back a distance of tens of meters, Wei Ran jumped out of the driver's cab, waved his hand and took out the anti-tank gun in the metal book.

Press a box of high-explosive bombs produced in Finland in the 80s, shake the handle on the gun mount and slowly aim the muzzle at the window you just went to.

At such a short distance, even with the mechanical sight on the anti-tank gun, he would not miss the target, so after loading the gun, he did not waste much time, and he decisively pulled the trigger.

Five rounds of high-explosive bombs were fired in a row, and only the window frame remained. Seeing this, Wei Ran raised his binoculars to observe, then moved his numb shoulders, and closed the wall in front of him. weapon.

When he drove the transport vehicle up for the second time, and stepped on the roof to climb up to the windows on the second floor full of glass slag, more than half of the red brick wall that used to block the road was also cut off by high-explosive bombs, allowing the long-lost The sun shone back into the room behind the wall.

Carefully stepping over the half-collapsed single-story red brick wall, Wei Ran frowned. Although the building was well protected, no furniture was found in the room.Even the door was also removed.

Cautiously walking into the dark corridor, Wei Ran turned on the headlights prepared in advance, and then turned on the strong flashlight in his hand.

In the dark and cold corridor, Wei Ran could still smell a strong musty smell even with a mask blocking him. As the beam of the flashlight and headlamp swept across the rooms, Wei Ran became more and more disappointed.

This building also only has three floors. There is no difference between the first floor and the second floor. Everything that can be moved has been removed, and the stairs have all been blown up. A layer of solid ice, apparently water seeped in during the summer.

However, when he climbed to the top floor, he immediately realized something was wrong.The place where the flashlight's beam swept was covered with a blanket, and the blanket was also covered with all kinds of things, big and small!And the most of them is the bust of Stalin!
Bending down to pick up an old book from the wooden box framed by sleepers, when he wiped the dust with his sleeve, he found that on the dark blue cover, "The Complete Works of Stalin" was written in gold in Russian.

Gently let go of the pages of the book that are tied together by mold boards, and there are even large paragraphs of reading sentiments written with pens inside.

Putting this book aside, Wei Ran picked up the next one.This book is more moldy, but it is still barely recognizable as "On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union".Similarly, in this book, various sentiments when reading this book are also written in the blank space.

Putting down the old book in his hand, Wei Ran continued to take two steps forward, and after gently tearing open a picture frame wrapped in newspaper, he found that it was wrapped with a portrait of Stalin that was more than half a meter wide.

Patting the dust off his hands, Wei Ran pushed open the door of a room, and carefully let the flashlight and beam shine in.

As far as the eye can see, there are all kinds of things related to Stalin, from books to hanging portraits, from sculptures to flags.He even saw boxes of films of unknown contents, and several large boxes of Stalin's portrait bronze medals with wrapping paper.

Exiting the room, he was already sure that the reason why those buildings had blown up the stairs before was probably a cover-up to hide the situation here.And these things hidden here are undoubtedly the product of the "de-Stalinization" of the Khrushchev era.

During the vigorous campaign involving many countries in Eastern Europe, these items with a strong intention of cult of personality were either destroyed or handed over in a unified manner. Of course, many of them were hidden like this.

And these things in front of me, in this era of relatively free thinking that Wei Ran lives in, can undoubtedly be sold for a good price.Of course, the premise is that all these things can be shipped to the European part in a relatively cheap way, and there is a way to sell them to the right people-this is obviously not what Wei Ran is good at.

Putting the idea of ​​making money behind him, Wei Ran looked for useful clues in the "treasures" all over the floor.

He has not forgotten why he came here, no matter how much the antiques that are not long in the past can sell for, the business of this trip is to find the demantoids that may exist first.Obviously, this search work cannot be completed in a short while.There is no other reason, there are too many things piled up here.

Using a bayonet to pry open a moldy wooden box, Wei Ran took out two bronze statues the size of thermos pots and looked at them.Like the square outside the building, these two stations look like one is Lenin and the other is Stalin, and even the movements are not much different from the statues outside, except that they are countless times smaller.

Putting it back in place, Wei Ran moved to the side of the second wooden box and pried open the lid with a bayonet. Unexpectedly, there was a large box full of Soviet-style propaganda posters inside.

Obviously, these mildew-stained posters never got a chance to be posted from the day they were printed, so they were forever sealed in this wooden box, and followed the wooden box to hide in this dark building.

Going forward, when the third wooden box was pried open, there were enamel cups next to each other.Take out one at random, and it really has Stalin's face printed on it.

Putting the enamel cup wrapped in kraft paper back to its original place, Wei Ran continued to play the box-opening game endlessly in this dim room.

In the following boxes, not only were there more enamel cups, but also similar-style kettles, mirrors, and even wooden stencils for printing slogans.

Working until the brightness of the headlights began to decrease, Wei Ran finally stopped, and returned to the living compartment of the transport vehicle with the clues and items he found.

There are only two things that he can bring back, one of which is a half-folded map placed between the busts.

This half map clearly shows the situation of this mine. It not only marked the functions of each building in detail, but also confirmed Wei Ran's previous guess—those long trenches were really shacks for prisoners of war. !
It's a pity that this half of the map only covers this complex of buildings and a small half of the trenches.The remaining fields are missing.Most of the time before Wei Ran came back, he was also looking for the other half of the map that he didn't know where it was stuffed.

The second item he brought back was a black and white photo that was originally stuck on the mirror.It can be roughly inferred from the shooting angle that this photo should be taken from the roof of a certain building.

Of course, what attracted Wei Ran's attention came from the part where the camera focused. It was a busy scene. There was a long line of people outside the ground shack where the prisoners lived. From the head position, one could vaguely see someone I'm feeding them.

Behind those cooks, on the edge of the trench, three or five people could clearly be seen kneeling in a row facing the camera, and behind them, two more people raised their weapons.

Turning over the back of the photo, the smooth blue pen simply describes the scene at that time: On July 1951, 7, Mine No. 20 started a busy and boring day amidst the firing squad's gunshots.

(End of this chapter)