This story happened far far away, and a long time ago. Exactly, in the 70es of the 20th century, in the countryside near Volokolamsk, some 200 km north west of Moscow. And Brezhnev, the Gulags and all this kind of things have absolutely nothing to do with it.
In those times and in those places, life was not exactly easy, neither in the countryside, nor in the towns or cities. But, notwithstanding that, even there and then, boys and girls and human beings in general found their ways to exercise their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.
For some unknown reasons, Dasha was sure that living with Dimitri would have been a good way to execise this right. And since Dimitri had more or less the same idea about Dasha, they ended up married, hoping to live always together, to love each other the whole life through, and how they use to say in such cases, to die in the same day.
Dimitri (Dima, for the friends) was a "yèger", Dasha was a normal country girl. A milkmaid, to be precise, because for a city boy all the peasants are equal, but not for a peasant, not on your life. A tractor driver is a tractror driver, a milkmaid is a milkmaid, and so on.
"Yèger", as those who have German ancestors should have understood, is a word that the "great and powerful Russian language" (see Turgenev and Akhmatova for details) has imported from Germany (as "Yunkers", "Anschlag", "Lager", "Schlagbaum", "Hitler Kaputt", un so weiter), and it is used to indicate something like a forester.
Since usually the milk cows and the woods to be guarded are not exactly in the same place, especially in a place like Russia (where, as the saying goes, "100 km is not a distance"), Dima and Dasha not always slept together. But when it happened, of course, they did not only "sleep". And even if they did not read so much about the matter (virtually nothing, indeed), they got quite a satisfaction from it. From what they did when they did not sleep, I mean.
Dima was a good guy, and really loved Dasha, so he did not limit his performances to the "soldier's style" ("inside, outside and go", Russian equivalent of the famous "vlam, bam, merci madame") . On the other hand, he was used to possess Dasha with passion and feeling, when she allowed him to do it, of course (that is: very often). He did not mind if, when they made love, Dasha sometimes cried loudly as if he was hurting her. In his mind, this was the way to do it. "A man's got to do what a man's got to do", so to say.
And Dasha was absolutely agreeable. She knew by herself that "woman needs man and man must have his mate", and she was happy and proud to be Dima's mate. And even, roughly speaking, Dima's mare. And for all she thought, the stronger was Dima when she was his mare, the better.
And this was not a part of the solution, but a part of the problem.
Partly due to the war, partly to the normal facts of life (there are always more women than men, and tis was even more normal in Russia), even down there where Dima and Dasha were living there was a surplus in the supply of women. In other words, there were more women potentially eager to prove the physical capabilities of Dima, than men eager to prove their own ones to Dasha.
Dima knew about that. The problem was: Dasha knew about that too.
Despite his solitary profession, that he had embraced after having served out his time in the army, Dima was what they call a "rubà ka- pà ren" (untranslatable idiom, kinda "blouse-boy"), extroverted and easygoing, and he liked to joke with the friends, and even with the other girls, but he never gave Dasha any serious reason to be jealous. She was jealous "by default". If you prefer, "mathematically". She looked at all the other girls, and she thought how many they were, how beautiful they were (she was beautiful too, but you know, a woman is NEVER sure to be beautiful ENOUGH), and how could have been easy for Dima to have a good time with them.
Horizontally, I mean.
Her nightmares were full of girls who coveted his Dima, of legs opening in front of him, and of what could ensue, but she refused even to imagine when she was awake. Her Dima between the arms (and the le legs) of another girl. His long hard sex in the warm deep sex of another girl. Even with two girls at a time. The horror! The horror!
Dasha had been educated as all the Soviet girls between 1917 and 1991: "you will be Communist" as a primary school textbook, "I did't see Lenin but I love him" as a children's doggerel (sung in Russian, it's nothing weirder than "three blind mices"), etc. But for such kinds of problems, dialectical materialism gives no answers. And not even religion gives them. There was a good old "pop" surviving in a little old church, in the country town where Dasha lived, a man who had seen very bigger troubles than those who were haunting Dasha (the "purges" in the 30es, the war, and all the rest), but he could not help her: he did not feel what she felt, especially at night when she was alone.