We have an obscure book this week from a largely forgotten author. Yuri Bondarev’s (1924-2020) The Last Shots is a novella on World War II, largely considered from the perspective of young Russian soldier Captain Novikov.

Many books have been written about WWI and WWII.

Few of them have the youthful zest for life and energy as this work, with Captain Novikov and the nurse Lena he falls for reflecting a timeless romance. One where these two people are forever young.

That’s one of the core appealing aspects to a very well written and engaging novel. One we feel deserves much more retrospective credit than it’ll to receive.

The Last Shots and Bondarev’s Exploration of Romance, Death, and War

We happened across our small, tattered little copy in an independent bookstore in the back streets of London. That was in early 2004 and, unfortunately, we since forgotten where exactly.

We don’t normally buy books based on front covers, but The Last Shots was £3 and looked interesting (the cover was designed by A. D. Goncharov). And it ended up being a fantastic read.

The translation into English was by N. Lukoshkova.

The Last Shots is an enthralling and impressive little book which should be considered a classic alongside the likes of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel (both set in WWI), but somehow it’s been lost to time.

The story offers a detailed psychological character study of two young individuals caught up in conflict—the highly endearing Captain Novikov and the empathetic field nurse Lena.

Initially hostile toward one another, they begin to grow a mutual respect before falling for each other big time. But this isn’t a soppy love story, it’s a genuine and heartfelt examination of human connections during a time of immense strife.

This is where the Last Shots stands out compared to other war novels—it unearths the personalities of the people caught up in conflict.

Novikov meets likeable comrades whom the reader come to know, such as the irrepressible Alyoshin with his youthful verve and sense of humour, all amid the backdrop of nightmarish death and destruction. And it is the positivity of young people that shines off the pages.

Of the sergeant Remeshkov, Bondarev writes:

“The sergeant was only twenty years old. He had a sturdy, well-knit body. He wore his cap at a jaunty angle over his blond hair. Always tidy in dress, he now wore brand-new top-boots—not issue boots but German ‘souvenirs’—and pushed through his tight belt was a short sword, also German. These trophies and the cheeky smile on his face made him look like a boy dressed up as a soldier.”

Novikov and his company largely battle over a small area of land, but the battles are bloody, frightening, and intense, with Bondarev honing them down to terrific detail.

He also picks up on the eccentricities of human behaviour in those alarming scenarios. Such as with the idiosyncratic Major Gulko:

“Novikov looked at the map, his face twisted with impatience. He knew Gulko’s peculiarities. The more complex the situation, the more seemingly carefree the flow of his sarcastic chatter about trivialities before reaching a decision. At the height of a battle he would be seen peering into the periscope of an observation post with a cigarette clenched in his teeth and a petulant look frozen on his face—possibly, too, with his tunic off because his orderly was sewing on a button. In slacker periods he would paddle around his dug-out in soft slippers or lie on his bunk reading a dog-eared volume of Goethe, the angry jerking of his stockinged toes reinforcing the sarcastic sneer on his face. It seemed as if he were determined to live a life of bachelor comfort as a contemptuous gesture against soldiery smartness.”

Mid-way through the story a soldier called Ovchinnikov is taken POW by the Germans. This is one of the most cerebral and best chapters of the work.

It plays out a bit like Sartre’s short story The Wall (1939) in how the character is aware he’s likely to meet his end.

“Despairingly he thought: It just can’t be that in an hour or two I’ll be dead. An hour or two and I’ll be no more. So simple as that?… A stab of pain in his leg brought to him the vivid realisation that these steps he was taking were his last steps on earth. These, too, were his last thoughts, the last pains he would feel, the last blood he would spit out. He thought of his age—twenty-six and he would never be twenty-seven! It would be he, Sergei Ovchinnikov, who would be no more while others would live on, would laugh, embrace women, breathe.”

The final stages of the book focus directly on Captain Novikov and Lena as they embrace their attraction to each other. But face also face the tough realisation of the brutality of the war.

Death is just a constant in The Last Shots.

There aren’t long philosophical discussions about it, whether there’s an afterlife, or anything else, just occasional contemplations from characters, defiance of it through actions, or the enveloping embrace of it.

As with so many other wartime books, Bondarev didn’t end this story on a positive note. Yet you come away from these pages with a tremendous amount of respect for  Novikov.

He’s the youthful heart of the story and makes everything so lifelike.

An excellent book that this is, you may struggle to find yourself a copy. But if you can, here’s an obscure gem that stands out amongst the mass of other war literature.

Literaturnaya Gazeta’s Praise for The Last Shots

In a small section on the inside cover, L. Lazarev (from the Literaturnaya Gazeta) states the book was released in Russia in 1959 and became a bestseller.

It appears to have reached other areas of the world by 1970. That’s the copy we picked up 20 years ago, but it’s certainly out of print. And we couldn’t even find copies on Amazon or eBay.

A real shame, as L. Lazarev’s glowing praise for the work makes it clear what people who haven’t read this are missing out on. He describes in his concise introduction:

“[Bondarev] scored his greatest success in his two central personages: Captain Novikov, a wonderful young man, almost a boy, who commands a battery of guns, and Lena, the girl he loves, who is a field nurse. These personages are warm and charming, and the love of these young people to whom war has presented a few moments of happiness is pure and unconquerable.”

And L. Lazarev concluded with this:

“If I were to name the salient feature of The Last Shots, I would say without hesitation: Humanity.”

A wonderful line and a perfect summary for this little book.

Life Details Regarding Yuri Bondarev

For a long time, details about the writer were scant. It’s only recently that anything regarding Bondarev’s life has emerged.

Including, sadly, his passing at the age of 96 in March 2020.

Bondarev was a Soviet and Russian author and screenwriter. He appears to be most famous for the franchise film series Liberation, which ran from 1968 to 1971. There were five films in the franchise.

Fantastically, you can find these on YouTube. Here’s the first one in the form of The Fire Bulge. It has impressive production standards.

In the USSR he was successful from the late 1950s onwards, with words such as The Battalions Request Fire (1957) and The Last Shots.

Bondarev did fight during WWII and he was an artillery officer.

After the war he attended Maxim Gorky Literature Institute and didn’t look back from there, with his works being published into English for the first time from 1966. However, it appears fame in English speaking countries didn’t come his way (no one we’ve spoken to has ever heard of him).

Sadly, upon his passing, it wasn’t noted in any obituaries we could find for major publications (The Guardian, BBC, New York Times etc.).

However, we did find this intriguing article from The Guardian dated 30th March, 1985, listed on page 13 of the edition:

“Karpov stayed in the army until 1965, retiring as a regimental commander, and spent his last years in uniform attending night school at the Moscow Literary Institute. He had always wanted to write, he said, and he was lucky enough to be sharing classes with a gifted group of students that included Yuri Bondarev, one of the most impressive Soviet novelists now writing, Bondarev’s last novel Igra, attacked as anti-Soviet in some official on the walls of the Reichstag.”

But otherwise, he seems relatively unknown here in the UK.

Bondarev certainly was highly decorated in his home country, receiving awards such as Hero of Socialist Labour, Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner of Labour, and Order of the Badge of Honour.