Comrade David Dragunsky’s autobiography A Soldier’s Memoirs: Pages from the Story of My Life is now available on the American Archive of Marxism Leninism. The book can be viewed and downloaded here.
General David Dragunsky ranks among the heroes of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 against Hitler Germany. He was one of the men who had fought as tankmen against the panzer corps of Guderian. His bravery in battle, and his keen generalship earned him the highest decorations of the Soviet Union and of a number of foreign states.
He relates in his memoirs of his life as a little boy, son of a large Jewish village tailor’s family, of the hard years of the war, and of his postwar encounters with public leaders and statesmen, friends and foes of peaceful coexistence and detente. He calls his memoirs “pages from the story of my life”.
His writing is winningly sincere, the facts he presents are truthful. His view of himself is wryly humorous, with a touch of world-wise irony. He is outspoken about his philosophy of life, and most scrupulous not to injure the truth in his descriptions of friends, comrades-in-arms, and
various generals. As he says himself, he wanted them “to be the same in the book as they were in life”.
Comrades, I had the great pleasure of meeting and talking with General Dragunsky in 1974. I am overjoyed to see your attempt to post his memoirs online, but unfortunately the link does not work. Please try to fix it.
Yours in struggle,
Serge