"Catacombs" by Valentin Kataev, summary Automatic translate

This book was written in 1961. The author radically revised his previous work, "For Soviet Power," shifting the narrative focus from minor characters to the true leaders of the Odessa resistance. The publication achieved a strict chronology and historically accurate description of partisan life.

The work was successfully adapted for the screen. Boris Buneyev directed a feature film, and later a multi-part television series was released. The book concludes the literary tetralogy "Waves of the Black Sea." It is preceded by the stories "The Lonely Sail Gleams White," "A Farmstead in the Steppe," and "Winter Wind." Chronologically, the novel ranks fourth.

Peaceful skies and the first days of war

In the summer of 1941, Moscow lawyer Pyotr Vasilyevich Bachey flew with his son Petya on a passenger plane to Odessa. The boy enjoyed the flight, meeting the ship’s captain and his lively peer, Galya, who was flying to visit her father, Pavlov, a border guard. In Odessa, the travelers were met by their longtime friend Georgy Kolesnichuk. They settled into his seaside dacha, built from the rubble of old buildings.

War breaks out. Pyotr Vasilyevich volunteers for an artillery regiment. Petya’s evacuation by rail fails. Kolesnichuk’s wife, Raisa Lvovna, places the boy on a steamship. The vessel is attacked from the air at night. The blast throws Petya overboard into the open sea.

Salvation and the Soldier’s Oath

The boy is picked up by a fishing boat. He comes to in a coastal shack. He is cared for by the head of the fishing collective farm, Matryona Terentyevna Perepelitskaya, and her young daughter, Valentina. Matryona turns out to be the same Motya from Blizhnie Melnitsy, Pyotr Vasilyevich’s childhood friend.

The front line is inexorably moving toward the city. Right under the window of his shack, Petya finds the mortally wounded sailor Nikolai Lavrov. Dying, the Red Navy sailor gives the Pioneer his ship’s battle flag and his Komsomol membership card. The boy vows to protect sacred relics. The partisans bury the hero’s body. The women burn the collective farm’s boats and equipment to prevent the enemy from getting their goods. The village shack is ablaze.

Preparing the underground

Regional Party Committee Secretary Gavriil Chernoivanenko sets up an underground resistance base. He recruits the veteran Bolshevik Sinichkin, the young mechanic Svyatoslav, and the Kolesnichuks. Georgy Kolesnichuk remains in the city legally to run a second-hand shop to maintain contacts. Raisa Lvovna moves to the quarries.

Matryona, Valentina, and Petya wander the steppe at night. They hide from enemy soldiers. Petya hides a sailor’s flag in the masonry of a dry well. Soon they meet Svyatoslav in a camouflaged car. The group struggles across the Khadzhibey Estuary to the Usatovo farmstead. From there, the fugitives descend into a dank labyrinth.

Secret life underground

Pyotr Vasilyevich evades capture by disguising himself as a peasant. He attends a secret meeting in Alexander Park. There, Bachey recognizes border guard Pavlov, now renamed Druzhinin, disguised in an SS uniform. They mine the basement and blow up the enormous punitive building.

A harsh life is settling into place in the Usatovsky quarries. The underground members are setting up bedrooms, a kitchen, and a recreation area. Valentina and Petya spend their days cleaning rusty cartridges with bricks. The children secretly grow vitamin-rich green onions under a glass jar at the bottom of a well. The detachment receives radio reports from Moscow. The radiograms give them the strength to endure the darkness and cold. The year 1942 arrives. The underground members celebrate the change of years, sing proletarian hymns, and share the modest provisions from a basket sent by unknown friends.

Trading on Deribasovskaya

Kolesnichuk works at the "George" store. He sells Leningrad cloth from the detachment’s reserves. The profits support the resistance. Druzhinin enters the store, posing as a wealthy customer. He takes the money and delivers instructions.

Businessman Ionel Mirea buys all of Kolesnichuk’s cloth goods. He pays with counterfeit promissory notes. Kolesnichuk realizes the deception while trying to cash the notes at the bank. In desperation, he sells the counterfeits to a local marauder named Mochenykh. Soon, Ionel Mirea returns, disguised as the lawyer Florescu. He threatens to take Kolesnichuk to the police for the unpaid debt.

Meeting of two squads

Pyotr Vasilyevich makes his way to the old professor, Svetlovidov. The scientist works as a regular museum guard. The old man shows Bachey hidden entrances to the dungeons among the city’s buildings.

A ruined Kolesnichuk abandons his store. He makes his way through the steppe barriers, fights off dogs, and descends into Chernoivanenko’s camp.

The partisans discover alien tracks and writing on the dusty floor in the neighboring tunnels. Chernoivanenko organizes an armed ambush. A tense exchange of passwords ensues. The strangers turn out to be Druzhinin’s men. The two detachments merge. Petya Bachey finally embraces his living father.

Andreichev’s betrayal

The partisans derail an enemy gasoline train. The operation succeeds brilliantly, but Svyatoslav disappears without a trace. Druzhinin learns of his imprisonment through city agents. Suspicion falls on the shoemaker Andreichev, whose workshop housed the communications center.

Druzhinin goes to the shoemaker to check. Valentina receives reliable information about the man’s treachery. The girl rushes to the surface to warn the commander. She manages to run into the workshop. Druzhinin strangles the traitor with his own hands. The gendarmes break down the doors and capture the patriots.

The condemned are tortured for a long time. The heroes remain silent. They are led through the busy city streets. Svyatoslav, Valentina, and Druzhinin walk handcuffed. A branch of a blooming acacia falls on a girl’s head. Mothers secretly watch the condemned from the crowd. They reject the entreaties of the fascist lawyers. The partisans refuse to write a petition to the king for clemency. They are executed.

Underground trap

Petya replaces the deceased Valentina at the radio. The old Bolshevik Sinichkin dies of consumption while mapping the front line. The Red Army launches a powerful offensive.

The Germans are trying to flush out the partisans. They release heavy phosgene gas into the underground mines. Pyotr Vasilyevich and Leonid Tsymbal blow up a well, stopping the toxic cloud. The Nazis seal off all the exits and bomb the catacombs from the air. The detachment is left without food, water, or kerosene. They wander through abandoned corridors in complete darkness, illuminating their way with the occasional flicker of a lighter. They find an old Bolshevik leaflet from pre-revolutionary times. Matryona falls into a feverish delirium from exhaustion. Chernoivanenko notices the flickering of a tiny flame. It’s a draft blowing from a crevice opened by a landslide. The heroes emerge directly onto the sea.

Liberation of the city

On the shore of the estuary, the partisans see new-model Soviet tanks. The exhausted underground fighters drink icy water and embrace the fighters.

Petya returns to the abandoned well with the machine gunners. He digs up the rocks and retrieves the hidden battle flag along with Lavrov’s documents. The tank general kneels before the discovered flag. He pins the silver medal "For Military Merit" to Petya’s dust-blackened sheepskin coat.

Odessa is free. Petya, Kolesnichuk, and Tsymbal walk along the sunlit streets of spring. People joyfully greet the legendary underground fighters. Petya spots Galya in the crowd. The girl reads her father’s last message, scratched on the iron door of the prison cellar. Soviet life in the city is triumphant.