Maternal feat (School compositions). The feat of mothers during the Great Patriotic War The story of the maternal feat and
"Let's remember all by name"
Nikolai Stepanovich Fedorov, methodologist of the Yakutsk State United Museum of the History and Culture of the Peoples of the North named after Yaroslavsky, together with colleagues from regional museums, did a lot of research work - the names of mothers who sent four or more sons to the war were established. There were 24 of them. Just think and imagine - 24 mothers from Yakutia sent more than 90 of their sons to the front. In total, historians and local historians have identified 188 mothers who sent three or more children to the front.
The most famous of the mothers of Yakutia, who sent their sons to the front, in the Soviet period was and remains Fevronya Nikolaevna Malgina from the Tattinsky (Alekseevsky) region, who led her five sons to the war.
She became a symbol of all mothers who lost their children in the war. And most of the mothers remained unknown to many. In the post-war period, it was necessary to work, to raise the country from ruins, and there was no time for honors and glory.
“Most of their sons died in battles, went missing, died in captivity in fascist camps. We know of a case when a mother lost all her four sons, and the places of their death are unknown, they are still considered missing, ”says Nikolai Fyodorov, who established the names of mothers unknown to many before.
"I was killed near Rzhev, Thoth is still near Moscow ..."
Krivoshapkina Irina Mikhailovna (1857-1958). A resident of the Namsky ulus.
Irina Mikhailovna sent six sons and four sons-in-law to the war. A unique case when ten people from one house stood up to defend the Motherland. Of these, two sons remained on the battlefield. Irina Mikhailovna, at the age of 60, gave birth to the eleventh child, and at the age of 61 she gave birth to the last, twelfth. In 1947 she was awarded the title of "Mother Heroine".
Names of sons:
1. Krivoshapkin Mikhail Fedotovich (1889-1977). Drafted into the army 10.10. 1943 g.
2. Krivoshapkin Petr Fedotovich (1899-1973). Drafted into the army 10.10. 1943 g.
3. Krivoshapkin Zakhar Fedotovich (1910-1995). Drafted into the army 08/19/1942
4. Krivoshapkin Innokenty Fedotovich I (1913-1989). Drafted into the army on 06/26/1942
5. Krivoshapkin Vasily Fedotovich. He died in 1942 near Smolensk.
6. Krivoshapkin Innokenty Fedotovich II (1917-1944). The place of death is unknown.
Tutukurova Maria's husband and four sons were killed at the front.
Father and two sons of the Tutukurovs fought at Stalingrad. Buried in one mass grave.
She was born in the Orget nasleg of the Verkhnevilyui ulus. Collective farmer. Mother of a large family. From morning to evening she worked tirelessly. She accompanied her husband and four sons to the war.
1. Tutukurov Anisim Matveevich (1916-1943). Missing.
2. Tutukurov Kirill Matveyevich (1920-1942). He died at Stalingrad.
3. Tutukurov Gavril Matveyevich (1922-1942). He died at Stalingrad.
4. Tutukurov Fedor Matveyevich (1923-1944). He died in Karelia.
Father Tutukurov Matvey died in 1942 at Stalingrad. Together with his sons Cyril and Gavril, he was buried in the Grachevka gully near Stalingrad.
Borisova Evdokia Yakovlevna. Vilyui ulus. Balagachchinsky nasleg.
She worked on the collective farm "Molotov". Skillful needlewoman. Every work was argued under her hand. Until her death, Evdokia Yakovlevna did not believe in the death of her sons and every spring she aired their clothes, waited for them.
1. Borisov Nikolai Petrovich I. In 1944 he died near Leningrad.
2. Borisov Nikolai Petrovich II. In 1943 he died near Leningrad.
3. Borisov Alexey Petrovich. He died in 1943. The place of death is unknown.
4. Borisov Yegor Petrovich. He died in 1943. The place of death is unknown.
5. Borisov Sergey Petrovich. He died in 1944. The place of death is unknown.
Fedorova Daria. Verkhnevilyuisky ulus. Kharbalakhsky nasleg.
With her husband Gavril they joined the artel. They gave their cows and a bull to the public yard. They began to build a new life. She gave birth to seven children: two daughters and five sons. All sons died at the front.
1. Fedorov Nikolay Gavrilovich. (1912-1942). Missing.
2. Fedorov Innokenty Gavrilovich. (1913-1944). He died near Leningrad.
3. Fedorov Samson Gavrilovich. (1914-1942). He died under Starorussa.
4. Fedorov Savva Gavrilovich. (1919-1942). He died near Kharkov.
5. Fedorov Efim Gavrilovich. (1921-1942). Missing.
Byastinova Maria Efimovna (1869-1952), Taattinsky ulus, Chymnaisky estate. Like Fevronya Malgin, she sent five sons to the war. During the war, she expected rare letters from the front.
1. Byastinov Yakov (1910-1942). Missing.
2. Byastinov Gavrill. Killed in 1945. In the Vistula-Oder battle.
3. Byastinov Makar. He died at Stalingrad.
4. Byastinov Gerasim. He died at Stalingrad.
5. Byastinov Egor. In 1942 he disappeared carrying news.
Vasilyeva Anna Pavlovna. She lived in the Espekhsky nasleg of the Ust-Aldan ulus. She married the widower Vasiliev Grigory Romanovich with ten children in her arms. His first wife died giving birth to her tenth child.
Anna Pavlovna and Roman Grigorievich were married in 1917 in a church. Anna took care of ten children and six ailing old people on her shoulders. The children accepted her as their own mother. She was laconic, hardworking. She sewed all the clothes for a large family herself, bought an American sewing machine.
1. Vasiliev Petr Grigorievich (1913-1943). Died at Lake Ilmen.
2. Vasiliev Mikhail Grigorievich (1914-1945). The place of death is unknown.
3. Vasiliev Gavril Grigorievich (1914-1942). He died near Kharkov.
4. Vasiliev Kirill Grigorievich 1942. Killed in Ukraine.
Gabysheva Varvara Fedorovna.
She was born in the Legeysky nasleg of the Ust-Aldan ulus (1884-1962). She gave birth to 16 children, of which nine survived, four sons. All died, the places of death or burial are unknown.
1. Gabyshev Dmitry Fedorovich (1909-1944). The place of death is unknown.
2. Gabyshev Roman Fedorovich (1910-1944). The place of death is unknown.
3. Gabyshev Ksenofont Fedorovich (1922-1942). The place of death is unknown.
4. Gabyshev Mikhail Fedorovich (1924-1945). The place of death is unknown.
She saw her only son
Of all the stories described above, the life and fate of Maria Ivanovna Semyonova from the Verkhnevilyui ulus stands out.
When the war broke out, her only son was the secretary of the local Komsomol organization, and he had a reservation from being drafted to the front. But he was very worried that all his peers were fighting, and he remained in the rear. He repeatedly asked to be sent to the front, but the military registration and enlistment office refused, saying that, as a responsible worker, he was needed here. Seeing all this, his mother herself went to the military commissar and asked to take her only son to the front.
The son was called up, he left to fight and never returned to his native village, to his mother who was waiting for him ...
Another 188 mothers accompanied their three sons.
Can you imagine how many children all the dead soldiers could have?
They have been waiting for their sons all their lives. We stored their things and even food for them - meat, milk, if they suddenly come.
According to Yakut beliefs, one should not worry too much, grieve over the death of a loved one. Apparently, this belief and the strength of the spirit of women of those times affected their longevity. Even after the news of the death of their sons, their mothers lived a long life - 80 and 90 years.
As Nikolai Fedorov from the Museum of the History and Culture of the Peoples of the North named after Yaroslavsky, they collected materials, facts from the biographies of mothers-heroines in all uluses of the republic.
Colleagues from regional museums, local ethnographers helped us. Materials were sent from Amginsky, Megino-Kangalassky, Ust-Aldansky uluses, Ytyk-Kyuelsky literary museum, the remaining relatives were interviewed, and so on. Unfortunately, in the archives we found few documents about these mothers, we mainly collected oral materials. In the archives, after all, there are only official documents, pre-revolutionary, church documents, extracts from metrics, and that's all. And about how they lived in everyday life, how they worked, how many children there really were in the family, only eyewitnesses, old-timers could tell, but every year there are fewer of them. But we tried to find fellow villagers, mothers' fellow countrymen. For some mothers, we could not establish a patronymic, date of birth, there were no photographs.
Our relatives helped us a lot. Great help was provided by Margarita Konstantinovna Petrova from the All-Russian Society "Knowledge". They also helped us with the design of the exhibition by financing the manufacture of a sliding wall from panels. The exposition "The Holy Sorrow of Mothers" dedicated to the mothers of Yakutia, who sent four or more sons to the front, was opened in the Yakutsk Museum of the History and Culture of the Peoples of the North named after Yaroslavsky in May 2015 in honor of the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
The work was continued the next year. In 2016, a book was published in which the names of already 188 mothers of soldiers of the Great Patriotic War were indicated, whose three sons went to the front.
In the Samara region, the maternal valor of the remarkable Russian woman Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina and the feat of arms of her dead sons are immortalized.
The attention of the readers of Rossiyskaya Gazeta could not fail to attract the article "The Cranes Are Flying", published in this central periodical in the April 14, 2005 issue:
“On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory, the reconstruction of the most amazing monument on the Samara land began - a majestic monument in honor of a simple Russian peasant woman Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina and her nine sons who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War or died from front-line wounds.
Ten years ago, when the region was preparing for the publication of the regional Book of Memory, its working group received information that the large Volodichkin family had lived in the Kinelsky district before the war. Pavel Vasilyevich, Praskovya Eremeevna and their nine sons: Alexander, Andrey, Peter, Ivan, Vasily, Mikhail, Konstantin, Fedor and Nikolai.
When the war began, all nine Volodichkin brothers, one after another, left to defend their Fatherland. Already in June-July 1941, they fought on different sectors of the front. Praskovya Eremeevna had to see them off alone, since the head of the family, Pavel Vasilyevich, had died by that time. But with the youngest, Nikolai, the mother did not even say goodbye. Directly from the unit located in Transbaikalia, where he was doing military service, the son rushed past his native village in a military echelon. I only managed to hand over a short note rolled up into a tube at the nearest to Alekseevka railway station: “Mom, dear mother. Do not grieve, do not grieve. Do not worry. We're going to the front. We will defeat the fascists and we will all return to you. Wait. Your Kolka. "
But Praskovya Eremeevna did not wait for her sons. No one. Five of them - Nikolai, Andrey, Fedor, Mikhail, Alexander - died in 1941-1943. After the fifth funeral, the mother's heart broke down. The sixth - to Vasily, who died in January 1945, she came to an empty house, to which Peter, Ivan and Konstantin, all wounded in the summer of 1945, returned. But they, one after another, began to die from the numerous wounds received at the front.
Having learned this tragic story, the working group of the regional Book of Memory went to the local authorities with an initiative to build a memorial complex in Alekseevka on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Victory in Alekseevka to perpetuate the memory of the nine Volodichkin brothers and their great mother, Praskovya Eremeevna, who died in the defense of the Fatherland. The architect was Yuri Khramov, the author of many famous buildings in Samara ...
And on May 7, 1995, on the steep Alekseevsky cliff, not far from the house located on the street with the symbolic name Krasnoarmeiskaya, a majestic granite and bronze memorial was erected. Nine bronze cranes rush into the sky from an 11-meter stele. And in front of her stands the sculpture of Praskovya Eremeevna. Ahead is a 7-ton granite monument with the names of all the sons and their mother and the text: “Grateful Russia to the Volodichkin family”. During these ten years, the memorial and the house-museum, in a small room of which portraits of all the Volodichkins are placed, have been visited by about 150,000 people from all over the world. Newlyweds, schoolchildren and tourists come here ... "
Having begun on her own initiative back in the eighties of the last century to create a museum of the legendary Volodichkin family in the village of Alekseevka, Kinelsky district, the teacher of the local school Nina Kosareva collected a lot of documents and various objects and things. These and other exhibits were placed in a room of a house where a large family lived.
When the working group of the regional Book of Memory became aware of the amazing feat of a soldier's mother and her nine warrior sons, the Samara compilers of a modern military martyrology about fellow countrymen who died in the Great Patriotic War did not confine themselves to including the available documentary materials about the Volodichkin brothers in the preparation for 50 the Victory anniversary regional memorial edition. The chroniclers of the military glory of the Fatherland proposed to erect a worthy monument in honor of the remarkable Alekseev family of patriotic defenders.
The decision to erect a memorial complex "Maternal Valor" to perpetuate the memory of the nine Volodichkin brothers and their mother Praskovya Eremeevna, who died in the defense of the Motherland and died from severe front-line wounds, was made by the administration of the Samara region in December 1993.
Solemnly opened on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Victory, the monument to the Volodichkin family, which has already turned into an artistic and memorial landmark of international importance, is a monumental plot-symbolic composition about the great sacrifice and immensely high strength of the spirit of a mother who grieves and hopes for a better life for the surviving children -soldier - and her sons-heroes, who, one by one, were carried away from the earth by the wounds of war. On a stele made of pink and gray granite (eleven and a half meters high), nine bronze cranes (weighing 100 kilograms each) are fixed, as if going like a wedge into the sky, and in the iconic airspace of the memorial complex there is a sculpture of the mother-heroine made of the same metal Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina.
In the village of Alekseevka, there is the Volodichkin Brothers Street, on which there is the already mentioned memorial structure - a house-museum.
Praskovya Eremeevna was born on October 10, 1874 in Alekseevka in a peasant Orthodox family. Married to Pavel Vasilyevich Volodichkin in November 1894, the mother of many children was a housewife. A simple sympathetic woman, she had a calm, patient character and put all her kindness and spiritual generosity into raising children. The widow Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina, who died at the age of 68 in the middle of the war - September 29, 1943, was buried in the family grave in her native village Alekseevka.
The website of the Vozrozhdenie club, created at school No. 18 in the city of Novokuibyshevsk, Samara region, tells about a memorable excursion of a group of boys and girls to Alekseevka:
“In May 2004, 5th grade students of our school visited the museum and memorial of the Volodichkin family. The children learned the history of the family, saw what great work local schoolchildren are doing to collect material about war veterans, laid flowers at the foot of the monument that perpetuated the patriotism of the Russian family.
Nine sons were escorted to the front in 1941 by Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina ... 6 years before that, Praskovya Eremeevna had buried her husband and prayed to fate to save the children. A heavy cross fell to this family.
Six sons died, three died from wounds and diseases in the post-war period ...
During the preparation of the regional Book of Memory of the soldiers who died on the battlefields during the Great Patriotic War, her working group received information that a family lived in the village of Alekseevka near Kinel, of which nine sons went to the front.
To document this fact and collect material about the Volodichkins under the leadership of the retired Guards Colonel N.E. Popkov and the front-line writer V.N. Myasnikov, a lot of work has been done. They and the inhabitants of the village of Alekseevka did everything possible to perpetuate the memory of the heroic family. Given the unprecedentedness of such a case in the history of wars, Governor K.A. Titov and the administration of the Samara region supported the initiative of the working group of the regional Book of Memory, decided to build a memorial and were the first to allocate funds. The idea received full support from the President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, according to whose decision funds were allocated for the construction of the monument, donations also came from citizens and organizations. So it was in Russia - to build temples and monuments to the defenders of the Motherland by the whole world. "
THE WHOLE COUNTRY LEARNED ABOUT THEM
Equating the maternal feat of the Kuban collective farmer Epistinia Fyodorovna Stepanova with the military one, the Soviet state in 1977 posthumously honored her with a combat award - the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree. Being a Ukrainian native, Epistinia Fedorovna lived in the Kuban from childhood and here she married a peasant boyfriend Mikhail Nikolaevich Stepanov. Fifteen children were born in their family, but four of them were mowed down by hunger and disease even before the revolution.
Supporting Soviet power, the Stepanov family was among the first to enter a partnership for joint cultivation of the land, and then into the May 1 collective farm. Mother, father and their children lived on the Shkuropadsky farm, located not so far from the village of Timashevskaya.
Alexander Stepanov, the eldest son of Epistinia Fedorona and Mikhail Nikolaevich, died in the civil war. During an artillery and machine-gun exchange of fire between the Red Army and the White Guards that flared up nearby, Mikhail Nikolaevich Stepanov, an active member of the local revolutionary committee, hid in the reeds.
A seventeen-year-old boy, the first helper in the family, went in search of horses lost in the steppe. Considering him for a red scout, the whites seized Alexander Stepanov in the field and took him to the village of Rogovskaya. There he, as the son of an activist of the Revolutionary Committee, was identified by one of the accomplices of the White Guards, and they began to cruelly torture Alexander Mikhailovich Stepanov in order to find out where his father and the Revolutionary Committee members were hiding. However, the young man did not betray anyone and was shot ...
Grieving this loss, Epistinia Fyodorovna named her youngest son, who was born five years after the tragedy of the eighteenth year, Alexander - in memory of the elder, executed. In the thirty-third, the husband of Epistinia Fedorovna, Mikhail Nikolaevich Stepanov, was also gone.
Having worked on the collective farm as a groom, an accountant and an accountant, Fyodor Mikhailovich Stepanov began to serve in the Red Army and in the spring of 1939, after successfully completing the courses for commanders in Krasnodar, he received the rank of junior lieutenant. For further service, the young officer was sent to the Trans-Baikal Military District, and Fyodor Mikhailovich, in a brand new uniform and a cap with a raspberry band and a black varnish visor, just drove home for a few days.
Fyodor Stepanov, a graduate of command courses, arrived at the 149th Red Banner Motorized Rifle Regiment, which in 1939, during the fighting in the Khalkhin-Gol River region, was at the forefront of the attack in the Central Group of Forces. The regiment was ordered to capture two strategically important heights - Peschanaya and Remezovskaya.
In the early morning of August 20, 1939, to the sound of the "Internationale" melody pouring from the powerful loudspeakers installed by the political workers at the front line, our infantry rushed forward and threw the Japanese back from both heights. Twenty-seven-year-old junior lieutenant Fyodor Stepanov, having raised a platoon to attack, died in that fierce battle while performing his military duty in Mongolia.
In a letter from the command to Epistini Fedorona, it was noted:
“Your son, Fyodor Mikhailovich Stepanov, is a true Hero of the Red Army. In the battles for the inviolability of the borders of our mighty socialist Motherland, he proved himself to be an honest, courageous patriot, selflessly devoted to the Motherland ... "
For his feat, platoon commander Fyodor Mikhailovich Stepanov was posthumously awarded the medal "For Courage".
Deciding to replace his brother Fyodor, who died on Khalkhin-Gol, in the army, Pavel Stepanov enthusiastically studied military affairs and proudly wore the "Voroshilovsky shooter" badge. He, Pavel Mikhailovich, was a good gymnast, and he also wrote poetry and one-act plays for the drama club and took up comic roles with pleasure, played the violin.
The Leningrad regional military enlistment office of the Kuban sent Komsomol member Pavel Stepanov to study at the Kiev Artillery School. In the summer of forty-first Lieutenant Pavel Mikhailovich Stepanov served in Belarus, commanding a platoon of the 141st Howitzer Regiment.
Having entered the battle with the fascist forces near the western border on June 24, 1941, the soldiers of the regiment, restraining the onslaught of the enemy with their fire, retreated to the east of the country. In a cruel, deadly whirlwind of war, the fate of 22-year-old Lieutenant Pavel Stepanov has sunk into obscurity.
There is no information yet where he died and was buried. In 1975, the Ministry of Defense of the USSR sent an official certificate to the Stepanov family museum that the platoon commander of the 141st howitzer artillery regiment of the 55th rifle division, Lieutenant Pavel Mikhailovich Stepanov "was listed as missing in 1941 on the Bryansk front."
Ivan Mikhailovich Stepanov, who wrote poetry and read the novels of the writer Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky "How the Steel Was Tempered" and "Born by the Storm", was a senior pioneer leader at school, headed the House of Pioneers and worked in the Timashevsky district committee of the Komsomol.
Ivan Stepanov's service in the Red Army began in Ukraine, and then he successfully graduated from the Ordzhonikidze Red Banner Military School and became a communist. Taking part in battles in the winter of 1940, Lieutenant Ivan Stepanov in that - Finnish - war proved himself to be a strong-willed and decisive commander.
The Great Patriotic War found officer Ivan Stepanov on the western border, in Belarus. The regiment in which Ivan Mikhailovich served, after several days of difficult battles with the Nazis, was surrounded.
Soviet soldiers desperately, to the last bullet, fought with the Nazis. At night, our fighters went for a breakthrough, but not all of them escaped from the enemy ring. Many Red Army soldiers were killed, and Lieutenant Ivan Stepanov, who was seriously wounded, was captured by the invaders. The captured officer managed to escape, but the courageous lieutenant was again seized by the Nazis and, after a brutal beating, was again thrown behind barbed wire. The second escape also turned out to be unsuccessful, and only on the third attempt did Ivan Mikhailovich break free of fascist captivity.
In the fall of forty-first, Ivan Stepanov, exhausted and exhausted from hunger, reached the village of Veliky Les of the Smolevichi region, which is northeast of Minsk. Ivan Mikhailovich was hid in the family of a collective farmer of the Good Will agricultural cartel P.I. Noreiko and helped to quickly get stronger and gain strength to participate in the partisan movement. Then, in the village of Velikiy Les, Ivan Stepanov met a girl named Maria and fell in love with her.
Having become the people's avenger, Ivan Mikhailovich was part of the partisan detachment for almost a year. A brave fighter of the Motherland, he not only fought with enemies and went on reconnaissance, but also wrote leaflets and distributed them among residents of the surrounding Belarusian villages.
Once the invaders tracked down Ivan Stepanov and, seizing him, shot him in April 1942. This execution took place in front of Mary, who was expecting a child.
Twenty-seven-year-old partisan Ivan Mikhailovich Stepanov, who died during the nationwide battle with the Nazi invaders, was buried in a mass grave in the village of Drachkovo, Smolevichi district, Minsk region.
Ilya Mikhailovich Stepanov, who played the guitar well and had a pleasant juicy voice, was very fond of the well-known song about three tankers. And when in October 1937 it was time to go to serve in the army, conscript Ilya Stepanov said at the Timashevsky district military commissariat that he wanted to study as a tanker.
Two years later, Lieutenant Ilya Stepanov, a graduate of the 1st Saratov Armored Vehicle School, was appointed platoon commander of the 25th Tank Brigade. The mechanized unit was based in the Baltic States, where Lieutenant Ilya Stepanov received his baptism of fire on the first day of the Great Patriotic War. In a battle against the Nazi invaders, the tank officer was wounded and was in a hospital in Rostov for a long time, and in the fall of 1919 he came to his mother to complete treatment.
Soon Ilya Mikhailovich again went to the front and fought at Stalingrad, again ended up in the hospital. From the banks of the Volga in November 1942, Ilya Stepanov wrote to his sister Valentina, who was evacuated in Alma-Ata: “I live well. The threads are strong, and the belly is held tight ... Soon we will give the Fritz pepper. "
And then - new heavy fighting, and in December 1942, Ilya Stepanov was wounded for the third time. In May 1943, tank officer Stepanov sent a letter to Epistinia Fedorovna: "I think a lot about you, I live with you in my mind, my own mother ... your son Ilyusha."
And this turned out to be the last written message of Ilya Mikhailovich from the terrible whirlwind of war. Fighting with the enemy on the Kursk Bulge, the 26-year-old commander of the command company of the 70th Tank Brigade, Ilya Stepanov, died a heroic death.
Guard Captain Ilya Mikhailovich Stepanov, who died in a fierce tank battle for the crossing on the Vytebet River, was buried in a mass grave in the village of Afanasovo, now in the Kaluga Region.
The second, Alexander Mikhailovich Stepanov, who was born on April 25, 1923 on the Shkuropadsky farm (now the Timashevsky municipal district of the Krasnodar Territory), graduated from 8 classes and worked on a collective farm. Being in the Red Army since September 1941, Alexander Stepanov the next year became a graduate of the Uryupinsky Military Infantry School and in the same 1942 went to the front.
Guard Senior Lieutenant Alexander Mikhailovich Stepanov, the commander of a rifle company of the 9th Guards Mechanized Brigade of the 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps (47th Army of the Voronezh Front), among the first crossed the Dnieper on September 30, 1943. The company led by a guards officer occupied the outskirts of the village of Selishche, Kanevsky district, Cherkasy region, and on October 2, 1943, while repelling an enemy counterattack, the commander blew himself up and the Nazis who surrounded him with a grenade.
For this feat of the guard, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Mikhailovich Stepanov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on October 25, 1943. The holder of the Gold Star medal Alexander Stepanov, awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star, was buried in a mass grave in the village of Bobrytsa, Kanevsky district, Cherkasy region of Ukraine. Streets in the cities of Kanev and Timashevsk were named after the Hero.
Vasily Mikhailovich Stepanov was inexhaustible for good deeds for his fellow countrymen, with whose most active participation a drama club and a football team were born on the farm, "live" newspapers were made and concerts of a string orchestra and performances of a propaganda team of blue-blouses were organized. Having independently studied musical notation and conducting technique, Vasily Stepanov played excellent music himself - he played the violin. When required, he became a hairdresser, and a shoemaker, and an artist ... He had golden hands - Vasily Mikhailovich even made a violin and a balalaika, and these homemade instruments sounded like factory instruments. A peasant son, he grew bread and mowed hay, and with a rifle guarded the collective farm property.
Having gone to the front in the first days of World War II, Sergeant Vasily Stepanov fought in the Crimea as part of an artillery unit and carried out an important command mission in the enemy's rear near Kerch. In 1942, Vasily Mikhailovich was seized by the Nazis and thrown behind barbed wire into a prisoner of war camp, from which the strengthened Soviet soldier managed to escape.
In the Nikopol region of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Vasily Stepanov contacted the underground, who led him to the partisans. Having received from them the task - to blow up the bridge across the river, with Vladimir Oniklienko Vasily Stepanov made his way to Nikopol, where on November 2, 1943, he was again captured by the Nazis. The Nazis subjected the communist Vasily Stepanov to cruel torture, but he stood firm and courageous. Two weeks later, on the outskirts of the city of Nikopol, the Nazi invaders shot seventy-eight Soviet patriots. Among those who were executed by the invaders was the 35-year-old sergeant of the Red Army and partisan Vasily Mikhailovich Stepanov.
Two months before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the Stepanov family was pleased with the publication in the main periodical of the country - in the newspaper Pravda in the issue of April 22, 1941, a photograph of the field foreman from the Kuban collective farm named after May 1 of the communist Philip Mikhailovich Stepanov was printed. A photojournalist captured him in the grain field, among the spills of wheat. A talented farmer, in 1939 he raised the highest yield of grain and sugar beets in the Timashevsky district and became a participant in the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow.
Philip Stepanov, like his brother Vasily Mikhailovich, had a chance to fight in the Crimea, where once they even had an unexpected and therefore doubly joyful meeting on the front road. In October 1941, in a letter to his mother and wife, Vasily Stepanov announced: “I saw Filya, we met by chance. We sat and talked for an hour ... "
Private Philip Stepanov, who fought in the first machine-gun company of the 699th Infantry Regiment, took his last battle with the Nazis in the Kharkov region. In May 1942, Private Philip Stepanov was seriously wounded and taken prisoner. After escaping from the concentration camp, the Soviet soldier was again captured by the Nazis, who brutally beat him and sent him deep into Germany.
Only after the Victory Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova learned about the day of the death of her communist son Philip Mikhailovich. From Moscow, the executive committee of the Union of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the USSR sent the Kuban soldier's mother an official notification document:
“According to our information, gr. Stepanov Philip Mikhailovich (...) died on February 10, 1945 in Germany, in camp number 326 ... "
Soldier-prisoner of war Philip Mikhailovich Stepanov at the age of 35 was tortured by the Nazis.
Mother Epistinia Fedorovna received a "funeral" for the son of Nikolai Mikhailovich Stepanov. However, fortunately, he returned home after the Victory.
And Nikolai Stepanov went to the front in August 1941 and fought in the 5th Guards Don Cavalry Corps. Guard Private Stepanov, who together with fellow cavalrymen fought against the Nazi invaders in the North Caucasus and liberated Ukraine from the invaders, was wounded several times.
Moreover, Nikolai Mikhailovich received a very serious wound in October 1944 - the shrapnel severely damaged the right leg of the guardsman. Surgeons managed to extract only a part of these "different-sized" sharp metal pieces, and he, a soldier of the Great Patriotic War Nikolai Stepanov, carried some of the fragments in his body until the end of his life. And the doctors at the Kislovodsk evacuation hospital fought for her for eight months.
Not knowing that his mother had sent him a "funeral" from the front, Nikolai Mikhailovich, chained to a hospital bed, decided not to write home. Fearing that he might not survive after being wounded, Guard Private Stepanov did not want to reassure his mother ahead of time that he had survived in mortal combat with the Nazis.
But Epistinia Fyodorovna waited for a joyful hour, when in August 1945, the wounded son Nikolai Mikhailovich crossed the threshold of the house. In his native places, the front-line soldier remembered how, before the war, he organized an orchestra of folk instruments on the farm, in which he played together with brothers Vasily, Pavel and Ilya. In Rostov, at the Olympiad of the Azov-Black Sea Territory, their team took one of the first places and received a set of musical instruments as an award.
In the post-war period, Nikolai Stepanov, as long as his health allowed, worked as a carpenter in a collective farm construction brigade. Sometimes a front-line worker took a button accordion, and the melody of the famous song "In the dugout" to the words of Alexei Surkov was heard along the village street (Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Stalin Prize for 1946 and 1956, poet and public figure Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Alexandrovich Surkov, participant in the Finnish military campaign and the Great Patriotic War, was in the fifties the rector of the A.M. Gorky Literary Institute and the first secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR, and was also a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and a member of the World Peace Council; died June 14, 1983 in Moscow):
Fire beats in a small stove,
On the logs there is tar, like a tear,
And the accordion sings to me in the dugout
About your smile and your eyes.
The bushes whispered to me about you
In the snow-white bushes near Moscow.
I want you to hear
How my voice longs alive.
You are far, far away now
There is snow and snow between us ...
It's not easy for me to reach you
And to death - four steps.
Sing, harmonica, in spite of the blizzard,
Call the lost happiness!
I'm warm in a cold dugout
From my unquenchable love.
Nikolai Mikhailovich Stepanov, the only son of Epistinia Fedorovna who returned from the war, died of wounds received at the front in 1963 at the age of 60.
She had an unusually loving, strong and courageous heart. Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrei Antonovich Grechko and General of the Army Alexei Alekseevich Epishev in 1966 turned to Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova - the mother of the brave defenders of the Motherland:
“You raised and educated nine sons, and you blessed nine people most dear to you for feats of arms in the name of the Soviet Motherland. With their military deeds, they brought closer the day of our Great Victory over the enemies, glorified their names.
You, a soldier's mother, are called by soldiers their mother. They send you the filial warmth of their hearts, before you, a simple Russian woman, they kneel down. "
The last years of her long and truly amazing life, Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova, a personal pensioner of union significance, spent in Rostov-on-Don, in the family of her daughter-teacher Valentina Mikhailovna Korzhova.
A remarkable woman mother, who lived for 94 years, died on February 7, 1969. The soldier's mother Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova was buried with all military honors in the village of Dneprovskaya, Timashevsky district, Krasnodar Territory.
Evgenia Boltik in 2009 on the site "The Land of Smalyavitski" ("The Land of Smolevichi", that is, the Smolevichi district of the Republic of Belarus) posted her article "... And the memory of soldiers' mothers" about the great feat of women who raised their children as worthy citizens and selfless defenders of the Fatherland :
“A bitter and heroic lot for many centuries fell to the mothers of our Motherland. Together with their husbands and children, they, not sparing their lives, fought for their home and for their native land with the invaders who encroached on our country. But a particularly heavy burden fell on the mother's shoulders during the years of the struggle against the German fascist invaders. The soldiers' mothers endured and endured everything under the weight of grief.
Annually, on November 2, the Day of Remembrance of the Hero of the Soviet Union Pyotr Kupriyanov, who died heroically during the Great Patriotic War, is celebrated. (Belarusian Pyotr Ivanovich Kupriyanov from May 1943 to July 1944 was a liaison and machine gunner of the Razgrom partisan brigade of the Minsk region, and from July of the forty-fourth he was in the active army. Scout of the 3rd battalion of the 53rd motorized rifle brigade of the 29th tank corps 5 1st Guards Tank Army of the 1st Baltic Front, on November 2, 1944, during an attack on an enemy strongpoint near the village of Nikratse, Kuldiga region of Latvia, he closed the embrasure of an enemy bunker with his body. degree, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on March 24, 1945. The holder of the Gold Star medal, Pyotr Kuprinyanov, was buried on the territory of the Nikratse state farm. Union of Peter Kupriyanov, and in the city of Zhodino, a monument to mother Anastasia Fominichna Kupriyanova was erected and in to seven of her five sons who died during the Great Patriotic War. The documentary film "Pyotr Kupriyanov" is dedicated to the life and heroic deeds of the Hero. - A. T.) This year the immortal feat of the Hero, who at the critical moment of the battle closed the embrasure of the enemy bunker with his chest, turned 65 years old. The Hero's mother Anastasia Fominichna Kupriyanova lost the most precious thing over the years of war, her five sons. The maternal feat of Anastasia Fominichna was highly appreciated today. She was posthumously awarded the Order of Peter the Great, First Class. After her death (in the house built for Anastasia Fominichna Kupriyanova by the soldiers of the military unit in which Peter served), a house-museum was opened ...
The granddaughter and great-grandson of Anastasia Fominichna Kupriyanova Valentina Mikhailovna Karalenko and Vladimir Evgenievich Murashko, as well as the deputy director of the Timashevsky Museum of the Stepanov family, which is located in the Kuban, Lyudmila Nikolaevna Doroshenko ...
3rd November all<…>guests visited Drachkovskaya secondary school ...
After visiting the museum, the school hosted a meeting of guests with alumni<…>, during which Lyudmila Nikolaevna Doroshenko<…>she introduced schoolchildren to the museum, which was created as a tribute to the memory and respect of the mother of Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova and her nine sons, who gave their lives for the Fatherland. There is also a memorial courtyard of the Stepanovs in the museum<…>, where to this day everything has been preserved in its original form ... The civil feat of Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova was awarded the military order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, and during her lifetime she was awarded the "Medal of Motherhood" and the medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 years. ”, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, Epistinia Fedorovna was awarded the Certificate of Honor for the upbringing of her children.
After the meeting, the schoolchildren, together with the guests, went to the mass grave, which is located in the village of Drachkovo, where one of the sons of the Stepanov family, Ivan, is buried, who was shot by the Nazis. Wreaths and flowers were laid at the mass grave, and the memory of the fallen soldiers was honored with a minute of silence.
For a long time there are no mothers with many children who lived during the war years. But even decades later, we remember their maternal feat ”.
In the museum-courtyard of the Stepanov family, there is a squat hut under a reed roof. In the exhibition hall "Slavic Housing" there is an exposition that tells about the life and everyday life of Cossack families and about the courage of self-sacrifice of local natives who died during the Great Patriotic War defending the Motherland and in the post-war period while fulfilling their military duty. In the courtyard there is a memorial sign of Epistinia Stepanova, about which the famous Kuban poet Kronid Oboyshikov wrote in his poem:
"... Your maternal feat is immortal for centuries,
Equal to the feat of your unquenchable sons:
You have carried nine lives in good hands,
Russia remembers ten lives of the Stepanovs "
The Moscow director Pavel Rusanov made a documentary film "A Word about a Russian Mother" in 1966, and this film won a silver prize at the Moscow International Film Festival, and at the Monte Carlo festival it won the first prize - "The Golden Nymph". The prototype of the monument located in the Timashevsk public garden was a frame from this documentary: a soldier's mother sits on a bench and waits for her sons. Timashevsk, which became famous all over the world thanks to the Stepanov family, is named in honor of Epistinia Feodorovna the city of maternal glory.
The heroine of the film "A Word about a Russian Mother" Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova - an elderly woman in a neatly tied white scarf - tells the audience the story of her difficult and bright life from the screen. And it is impossible without excitement, spasm and deep heart compassion to listen to this quiet sad tale: "... All the sons are coming, but mine are not and there are not ..."
To everyone who has seen this tape-confession, parting and kind encouraging words of Epistina Fedorovna Stepanova are addressed, which sound at the very end of the documentary: "No matter how hard it is for you, remember me, and all your troubles will seem not so terrible" ...
The feat of the soldier's Mother inspired the poet Felix Chuev to write lines of poetic confession to the great Russian woman, who not only did not bend under the exceptionally heavy burden of her fate, but also strengthened in others the love of life and faith in the need to walk this world with goodness and dignity:
“... Mother took
one on myself
memory of nine.
In her common life
war - nine wars
For others,
pain calmed
mothers,
those from whom they came
those who do not have
children, -
of all mothers of the earth "
In her journalistic work "Mother", Nadezhda Pestereva told what a seemingly unreasonable cross the time of wars and tears with hope in half had placed on a woman with many children in Kuban:
“... Epistinia Fyodorovna Stepanova had to spend all her sons on the dashing roads of war. Only one returned home. Nine times she went out the gate, holding on to her son's duffel bag. The road from the farm May 1, in the Kuban, went first in the field, and then took a little uphill, and then a man in a soldier's greatcoat was clearly visible. So Epistinia Feodorovna remembered her sons - leaving.
Alexander, Nikolai, Vasily, Philip, Fedor, Ivan, Ilya, Pavel and even the younger Alexander - all of them, except for the elder Alexander, who died in the civil war, and Fedor, who fell in battle with the Japanese invaders on the Khalkhin-Gol River, were called up to Great Patriotic War. Daughter Valya remained with her mother. And Nikolai, the only one who returned from the front, died after the war from the consequences of front-line wounds.
All the war years, the mother lived with news from the children. And the sons did not forget their mother. “We will soon return to our native places. I assure you that I will beat the rabid fascist bastard for my native Kuban, for the entire Soviet people, until my last breath I will be faithful to the military oath, while my heart is beating in my chest ... We will finish, then we will come. If there is happiness, ”wrote the younger Sasha, Mizinchik, as his brothers called him. He was the last of his sons to go to war.
And then the letters were gone. They were not from Pavel, Philip, Ilya, Ivan ... So, in obscurity, enduring anxiety and anticipation, came 1943 - a year of difficult trials.
In 1943, Sasha died. He was twenty. After graduating from military school<…>Alexander Stepanov fought in Ukraine. When crossing the Dnieper near the village of Selishche, all the soldiers of his unit were killed. Then he, the commander, the only survivor, holding a grenade in his hand, went out to meet the Nazis ... Alexander Stepanov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Ilya died on the Kursk Bulge. Partisan intelligence officer Vasily Stepanov laid his head near Dnepropetrovsk. Ivan's grave on the Belarusian soil. Pavel Stepanov disappeared without a trace (while defending the borders at the Brest Fortress). Philip was tortured in the Nazi concentration camp Forelkruz ...
The mother did not receive the funeral immediately. She did not put on a black scarf for mourning, she believed that the children were alive, only they could not give news. But days, months passed, and they did not respond. The mother was waiting for letters from her sons, but received a notice of their death. Each such message inflicted deep wounds on the heart ...
In the Kuban, in the village of Dneprovskaya, a museum has recently been opened. It bears the name of the Stepanov brothers. People also call it the Museum of the Russian Mother. After the war, the mother of all her sons gathered here. The things that are stored in it can hardly be called by the museum word “exhibits”. Each subject speaks of motherly love and filial tenderness. Everything that mother took care of is collected here: Vasily's violin, a notebook with Ivan's poems, a handful of earth from Sasha's grave ... Appeals to my mother are full of filial love and care: “I think a lot about you, I live with you in my mind, dear mother. I often remember my home, my family. "
After the war, the whole country learned about the Stepanov family. A book has been written about the Russian Mother, and a museum named after her has been created. And then there's the movie. It was filmed during the lifetime of Epistinia Fyodorovna, when she stepped into her ninth decade. He is shown on a small screen in a museum ... She is all in that distant happy time, and her wrinkles are smoothed out, and her eyes become light, and her hand seems to be looking for her son's soft-haired head to caress ... To everyone who listens to her , I believe in good things, and I want nothing to happen to her dear boys.
And then the mother's voice is interrupted, and then it becomes difficult to look at the screen because of the surging tears, it is difficult to listen to the woman and it is impossible to cope with the excitement ... The screen is silent, and people in the audience cry. No one can answer the mother where the graves of Paul, Philip, Basil are. There is nowhere for her to come to cry her pain, there is nowhere to plant a white-barked birch - a symbol of the Russian land and the Russian soul. She saw only one son's grave - a monument to the youngest Sasha in Ukraine.
There are many books in the Stepanov family museum. They stand on the shelf "The Dawns Here Are Quiet ..." by Boris Vasiliev, "White Bim Black Ear" by Gabriel Troepolsky, "Hot Snow" by Yuri Bondarev ... They are open on the first page: "To the Museum of the Stepanovs Family - With Grief and Soldier's Memory about the fallen. Yuri Bondarev "; “I present this book in memory of the nine Stepanov brothers who gave their lives for their Motherland in the Great Patriotic War. Their heroism was a manifestation of love for a person, a manifestation of honor, sincerity and truth. Nine sons of E.F. Stepanova will forever remain in the memory of the descendants along with their mother-heroine, the glorious daughter of their Motherland. Gabriel Troepolsky ".
You look at the photograph of Epistinia Fyodorovna in the museum and you see a kind, tired, wise woman with a kind of enlightened look. There are no pictures of her in her youth. The one in the museum was made already in old age. This photograph conveys that state of the Mother's soul, which raises her above suffering.
Epistinia Fyodorovna received many letters in her life. After the war, complete strangers wrote to her. Each of those who wrote found the only true words that were so necessary for her. One of them is from the young soldier Vladimir Lebedenko. “Permit me,” he wrote, “to consider your sons as brothers, and you as a mother ... Dear Epistinia Fyodorovna, you had nine sons, and now there will be even more of them.” And her heart in such lines acquired new strength.
Epistina Fyodorovna lived a quiet life. She spent most of the years allotted to her in anticipation of her sons ... The mother's name united nine other names. Together they are the Stepanov family. People bow their heads in front of the obelisk on which is carved:
"Those who lived valiantly,
Death crushed
The memory of you
Will never die!"
People walk and walk to the Mother Monument located not far from the museum in Timashevsk. They are going to bow to Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova and gratefully honor both her feat and the valor of other mothers of the Fatherland, whose brave children were taken away by a terrible, cruel war.
Mothers who lost all or several of their sons in the war were especially revered in Russia.
In long-suffering Russia, the name of the mother and the attitude towards her have always been sacred. But, to our greatest shame, only a few of those mothers who lost all or several of their sons in the war are adequately immortalized in the memory of their descendants.
Such a rare exception to the sad rule is the majestic memorial complex "Mother's Valor" in the village of Alekseevka in the city of Kinel, Samara Region, dedicated to Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina. The memorial is a bronze sculpture of the heroine mother, surrounded by nine bronze cranes on a granite stele, symbolizing her nine sons. Six sons of Praskovya Eremeevna died at the front of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. the death of the brave, three later died of their wounds. She did not wait for these last surviving sons: she received the news of the death of her sixth son, and her heart could not stand it ... Praskovya Volodichkina was awarded the Order "Mother Heroine" at number 1.
Anna Savelievna Aleksakhina, mother of ten children, sent eight sons to the front. Four of them did not live to see Victory. The Kuban peasant woman Epistimia Fedorovna Stepanova, who lost six sons at the front, was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree. Tatyana Nikolaevna Nikolaeva from Chuvashia also gave the Motherland six of her eight sons.
And how many unknown Russian mothers-heroines lost their sons on the fronts of the First World War! .. From the preserved historical chronicle of that time, cases of death of all or most of the officer brothers from hereditary military families are known. At the same time, there was widespread talk, for example, about the fate of six brother officers - the sons of Major General Mikhail Ivanovich Stavsky. The eldest of them was killed in the Japanese war. The other five brothers ended up on the fronts of the First World War, and three of them died in battle. And it is not surprising that their death was spoken of as a heroic feat of three Russian heroes. The first brother, Lieutenant Nikolai Stavsky, died attacking the enemy and raising a battalion that had lost its commander into battle. The soldiers completely defeated the enemy, but their new commander was mortally wounded in the head. For this feat, by decree of the emperor, Lieutenant Stavsky was posthumously awarded the honorary Golden St. George weapon. His brother Ivan exactly repeated this feat, raising two companies of soldiers to attack, and was also struck by the enemy's bullet. The third brother, Alexander Stavsky, had the opportunity to stay in the rear, since he held a state post, but went to the front after his brothers-officers, and for a number of exploits was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree. All the newspapers wrote about one of his heroic deeds. He, already an officer of the Life Dragoon regiment, being in cavalry reconnaissance with a dozen cavalrymen, broke away from his unit and fought behind enemy lines for six months until he broke through to his regiment. He was a dashing cavalryman and also laid down his head in the attack, directing his horsemen to the enemy.
Talking about these heroes, the newspapers never mentioned the unfortunate mothers of the fallen soldiers, but one maternal tragedy of that war left its mark both in the memory of her contemporaries and on the pages of surviving newspapers.
This is the story of Vera Nikolaevna Panaeva, mother of three sons - hussar officers. These were the captains Boris and Lev Panaevs and the captain-captain Guriy Panaev. They served in the famous 12th Akhtyrsky hussar regiment of General Denis Davydov (that very partisan poet, hero of the war of 1812). The Panaev family was well known in Russia. Vladimir Ivanovich Panaev (1792-1859) was once a popular poet. His nephew Ivan Ivanovich Panaev (1812-1862) became a writer who, together with the great Nekrasov, revived the Sovremennik magazine. His wife Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva (Golovacheva) also left a noticeable mark in the memoir literature of that time. Many Panaevs served in the Russian army. The grandfather of the hero brothers, Alexander Ivanovich, a university friend of the writer S.T. Aksakov, participated as an officer in the Patriotic War of 1812 and was noted for bravery with two types of award weapons - Golden and Anninsky. His son Colonel Arkady Alexandrovich Panaev (1822-1889) was a hero of the Crimean War and an adjutant of the commander-in-chief of the sea and land forces in the Crimea, Alexander Sergeevich Menshikov. Possessing a hereditary literary talent, he wrote a book of memoirs about his commander. Arkady Alexandrovich was married to Vera Nikolaevna Odintsova. In his family, living in the city of Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg, four sons were born, whom he raised as future military men. His early death shifted the upbringing of children to a widow, who not only did not interfere with their military aspirations, but also helped them to establish themselves in their choice, although they chose the most difficult and dangerous military professions - light cavalry and the navy. The mother was the closest person to the brothers, and they were the greatest joy and concern in life for her. By the time the Great War began, they were already thirty-year-old experienced officers: three served, as already mentioned, in the 12th Akhtyr hussar regiment, and one in the navy. The eldest of the brothers, Boris Arkadyevich Panaev, had already gone through the Russo-Japanese war, experienced all its hardships and was wounded twice. For his bravery, he was awarded four military orders, and was not only a caring commander, but also performed an act that the whole army was talking about. In one of the battles, Panaev saw that the messenger, who was galloping with the report, was wounded, and the Japanese wanted to capture him. Under the strongest rifle fire, the brave officer galloped up to him and took the wounded soldier from the battlefield to the Russian trenches.
Service in the Akhtyrka regiment was not easy, I had to take care not only of personal training, but also of the maintenance and training of my horse. But, despite the busyness, the Akhtyr hussars found time for literary impromptu, and for a funny joke. There are photographs of the dashing horse riding of the Panaev brothers and the playful training of the horse, which helped his owner Guriy Panaev put on his greatcoat. And the family literary gift manifested itself, in particular, in the writing by Lev Arkadyevich of the poem "For the revival of the hussars":
Put on your dolman soon
Hussars of former glorious years,
Insert the sultans into the shako
And buckle up your mentor.
Today is a great day for us -
Hussar and partisan Denis,
Hear our talk and clicks
Get up from the grave, come here ...
The war forced the brothers and their fellow soldiers to forget all the hussar's fun and plunge into the fiery abyss of war, which instantly engulfed many of them.
Russian officers have always been distinguished by selfless courage and a desire to be ahead of their soldiers, which ultimately led to their mass death. So, by 1917, in some units, up to 86% of the officers were killed or disabled.
In addition, Russian officers found it difficult to get used to modern methods of war, which required not only courage, but also reasonable cold prudence in battle. This largely explains the successes of the enemy troops in a number of battles in which German and Austrian officers only in extreme cases went ahead of the soldiers. In his memoirs, the Minister of War of that time, General of Infantry A.A. Polivanov noted that the Russian soldier fights stubbornly and will climb anywhere when there is an officer who leads him ...
The first to die was the most experienced thirty-six-year-old Boris Panaev, hardened in battles with the Japanese. In the most difficult August battles of 1914, he and his squadron attacked the superior forces of the enemy - the enemy cavalry brigade and was wounded twice in a short time. He received a particularly bad wound in the stomach. Overcoming terrible pain, he continued to lead the squadron into the attack and entered into a battle with the commander of the enemy unit. The enemy, seeing this, concentrated all the fire on the Russian officer. Several bullets pierced his head ... The hussars, inspired by the exploit of the commander, forced the enemy to retreat with a desperate attack. Boris Panaev died on August 13, and was posthumously awarded the Order of St. George 4th degree. In his book on cavalry tactics "To the commander of a squadron in battle" he wrote in 1909: "The commander is pitiful, the attack of whose unit failed - he was repulsed, but he was safe and sound." And he remained true to himself not only in words, but also in deeds ...
We do not know when his mother received the news of the death of her son, but most likely, two terrible news came at the same time ... Two weeks later, in the same attack, in Galicia, his second brother, thirty-five-year-old staff captain Guriy Panayev, also died. At the same time, a few minutes before his death, he repeated the feat of his older brother: he carried out a wounded private hussar from the battlefield. He was posthumously awarded, like his brother, the Order of St. George 4th degree. This is how one of his fellow soldiers described the feat of Guria: “... Guriy Panaev, fighting off him, was struck down by a bullet and a shell fragment in the chest. His body was found on a dead horse, the bridle of which he continued to hold in his hand even when he was dead. Death has imposed a striking beauty on his face. Guriy buried his brother Boris, Leo buried Guriy ... ”.
In the same battle, the third brother, captain Lev Panaev, earned the Golden Georgievsk weapon for taking enemy trenches and artillery pieces with a horse strike. Struck by the double blow of fate - the death of his brothers, he nevertheless finds the mental strength to write a letter of consolation to the mother of his fighting friend Nikolai Flegontovich Temperov, who also died in battle:
“... May the Lord God send you consolation in sorrow and with the righteous will rest the pure soul of Nikolasha ... three days later I buried my brother Guria next to him, who also died a glorious death during the attack ... Earlier on August 13, the Lord called my elder brother in the same way Boris. These are the losses, dear Maria Nikolaevna, suffered by you and my mother, having laid dear sacrifices on the altar of the Fatherland ... May the Akhtyrskaya Mother of God help you in sorrow, standing before the cross and looking at the sufferings of her Divine Son ... ".
Less than a few months later, the unfortunate Vera Nikolaevna received the third terrible news. On January 19, 1915, her third son, thirty-two-year-old Lev Panaev, performed a truly unparalleled feat.
He and his cavalry soldiers stopped the retreating infantry regiment and, leading it, went through the deep snow in a foot bayonet attack on the enemy machine guns, and captured its impregnable defensive positions at the cost of his life. Posthumously, he, like the brothers, was awarded the Order of St. George 4th degree. An eyewitness to the battle wrote: "... Not only the enemy's attack was repulsed, some of his positions were taken, many prisoners were captured, several machine guns, but in this attack Rotmistr Lev Panayev was killed on the spot with two bullets in the liver." The feat of the Panaev brothers not only amazed all patriotic Russia, but also became an example and an appeal for everyone - to volunteer to go to the front. In the Nikolaev Cavalry School, native to the brothers, they decided to open a marble plaque with a description of their feat and place it in a new training room. The sculptor V.V. Lishev portrayed V.N. Panaeva in the form of a boyaryn who, with a three-part folding icon and three swords in her hands, blesses the three sons bowed before her in the form of ancient Russian knights ... One cannot but admire the deed of the last of the Panaev brothers - Plato. He, a career officer in the Russian navy, left the naval service in the Far East, where he was the commander of the gunboat Sibiryak, to go to the front and fight the enemy face to face. The response to this act of the commander of the 8th Army, General of the Cavalry A.A. Brusilov, who said that the Panaevs are a truly heroic family, and the more there are, the better. Meanwhile, the command of the fleet, wishing to save the life of the last of the Panayev brothers, prevented him from being sent to the front and sent him to serve on a naval headquarters position in Petrograd.
And then the great mother turned to his superiors with a demand to immediately send her son to the front, where his brothers died, and to defend their Fatherland with arms in hand. The admirals, amazed by the act of Panaeva, could not refuse her and sent Platon Arkadyevich to one of the active squadrons of the Russian fleet.
From April 1, 1916, he already took part in hostilities, and on April 2, the imperial rescript was signed and widely published on awarding Vera Nikolaevna Panaeva with the insignia of St. Olga of the 2nd degree. This sign was established on July 11, 1915 by Emperor Nicholas II to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the reign of the House of Romanov "in consideration of the merits of women in various fields of government and public service, as well as their exploits and labors for the benefit of their neighbor." It seems to be appropriate to cite here the text of the highest rescript in full.
Order
on the Nikolaev Cavalry School
I declare with pride and happy joyful feeling the HIGHEST rescript addressed to the Minister of War. In the current great war, our army has shown an endless number of examples of high valor, fearlessness and heroic deeds, both of whole units and individuals. Particular attention was drawn to the heroic death of the three Panaev brothers, officers of the 12th Akhtyr hussar general Denis Davydov, now Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of the regiment of captains Boris and Lev and the staff captain Guria, who valiantly fell on the battlefield. The Panaev brothers, imbued with a deep awareness of the sacredness of their oath, fearlessly fulfilled their duty to the end and gave their lives for the Tsar and the Motherland. All three brothers were awarded the Order of St. George 4th century, and their death in open battle is the enviable lot of soldiers who have become breastfeeding for the defense of Me and the Fatherland. Such a correct understanding of their duty by the Panayev brothers is entirely related to their mother, who raised her sons in the spirit of selfless love and devotion to the throne and the Motherland. The knowledge that her children honestly and courageously fulfilled their duty, may fill the mother's heart with pride and help her to endure the test sent from above. Recognizing for the good to note the merits to me and the Fatherland of the widow of Colonel Vera Nikolaevna Panaeva, who raised the heroes of her sons, I favor her, in accordance with Art. 8 of the Statute of the insignia of St. Equal to the Apostles Princess Olga, a symbol of the 2nd degree and a lifetime annual pension of 3000 rubles.
I stay favorable to you.
Nikolay.
For another two years, the mother lived with the hope that the last son would still return home, and every day she prayed for him and all Russian soldiers, but in 1918 the last brother-officer Platon Panaev was also gone ...
It was already a different time, no one cared about the heroic or tragic death of a front-line Russian officer - revolutionary turmoil and madness swept over Russia. And in 1923, the heart of the mother of the fallen heroes of the First World War, the hereditary Russian noblewoman Vera Nikolaevna Panaeva could not stand it, just as it could not stand much later with another mother - a simple Russian woman Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina ...
The Order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga still exists today. It was established by the decision of His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Pimen and the Holy Synod of December 28, 1988 to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus.
Especially for the Centenary
Class hour on the topic "Maternal feat"
The purpose of the lesson: perpetuation of the memory of F.N. Malgina and her five sons.
Educational : study of the history of the Yakut people in the Great Patriotic War, the life and work of the Malgin family.
Developing : teach independent search for information, joint intellectual activity, improve the ability to analyze, compare, generalize, assess the relevance of events, develop emotional perception.
Educational: fostering the interest and needs of schoolchildren in intellectual and creative activity, fostering moral ideals: love for the Motherland and pride in it, love for the mother, respect for the older generation.
Equipment: portrait of FN Malgina, presentation “The Malgin family”, video clip about the beginning of the war, phonograms of war songs, model of the monument - obelisk of Glory, garlands of flowers, model of the Eternal Flame, paper cranes, class design materials, quote.
“Let's praise the woman - the mother, whose love knows no barriers, whose breast has fed the whole world! All that is beautiful in a person - from the rays of the sun and from mother's milk - that is what saturates us with the love of life ”M. Gorky.
During the classes
Teacher: Victory Day is a solemn holiday, when joy is intertwined with grief, laughter with tears. And we are all united by memory ... Let us bow down to the living and the dead, immortal and fearless. Those who took the battle at dawn on June 22, 1941 at the walls of the Brest Fortress. Let us bow to the women who, after seeing their husbands and sons to the front, went out into the fields, stood behind the machines, got on the tractors - this work shift lasted 1418 days and nights. 1941 year. The beginning of the war. The first days, months.(On the screen a video clip about the beginning of the war)
The boys were leaving - overcoats on the shoulders,
The boys left - they sang songs bravely.
The boys retreated - in the dusty steppes,
Boys were dying, where they themselves did not know.
Teacher: Mother. There are millions of them, and each carries a feat in the heart - motherly love. It was their lot to educate a generation that has taken the hardest blow - the war. A maternal feat is a feat of the Motherland itself. This is a feat of the people. His greatness will be praised for centuries.
Student: The Russian mother in the Dnieper region, Epstimia Fedorovna Stepanova, sent 9 sons to defend the Motherland, and none of them returned ...
Pupil: Anastasia Fominichna Kupriyanova, a Belarusian mother from the town of Zhodino, accompanied her five sons to the war. None of them returned ...
Student: Before the war, large families prevailed in Yakutia. Five sons - brothers sent more than 20 families to the front. Families Prokopyevs from Ust Amginsky ulus, Karataevs from Vilyui, Polischenko from Namsky ulus, Petrovs from Ordzhonikidze ulus, Nikanorovs from Megino-Kangalassky ulus, etc. But someone was returning from them.
Teacher: A tragic fate also reached a simple Yakut woman - mother from the taiga village of Bayaga, Alekseevsky (Tattinsky) region, Fevronya Nikolaevna Malgin. Fevronya Nikolaevna gave her five sons to the Motherland, she gave five of her lives ...
(Presentation of "Malgina".)
Teacher : Look into the face of this old woman, look into the eyes, which have faded from old age and grief, from a great life, from tears of expectation. A black headscarf habitually hugs the head, gray strands of hair peep out from under the headscarf. Fevronya Nikolaevna Malgina lived for 90 years. She was born in 1888. Of these, only 16 years she lived carefree and happy. Of the 20 children born by the beginning of the war, seven remained: five sons and two daughters.(Presentation continues)
Apprentice 1 : The eldest son Alexey was born in 1915. Since childhood, passionately in love with the vastness of the taiga, with hunting, he linked his life with the fur trade. Received the title of excellent hunter of the republic, was awarded with a personalized watch.
Apprentice 2 : The second son is also Aleksey, graduated from the Yakutsk feldsher-obstetric school, headed the Ust-Tattinsky first-aid post, then the regional health department. In 1938 he went to study at the Tomsk Medical Institute.
Student 3: The third son, Spiridon, born in 1918, graduated from the Yakutsk Agricultural College. He became a livestock specialist, but did not have to work for long. Entered the military school on October 4, 1940.
Student 4: The fourth son, Peter, like his older brother, Alexei, became a hunter.
Student 5: The fifth, youngest, Vasily became a medical assistant.
Pupil: Two daughters, two Mary - got married.
Teacher: The war with the White Finns began. Alexey Jr., a student at the Tomsk Medical Institute, volunteered for the front. He participated as a military doctor and on the very last day of the war, saving the life of a wounded soldier, he was seriously wounded and died from his wounds in the Tomsk hospital on April 9, 1940.
The mother took the news of her son's death as out of the blue. They say time heals wounds. Maybe this is so, but not the wounds of a mother who has lost a child. Although she had buried her young children before, it was completely different - after all, she buried with her own hands, in her own land. And the fact that the son was killed in a foreign country and his body does not rest in the land of his ancestors deepened the mother's grief and suffering.
Pupil: In the fall of 1940, another misfortune suddenly overtook ... The head of the family, the husband of Fevronya Nikolaevna, Yegor Petrovich Malgin, died tragically. Now all household chores, backbreaking work on the collective farm fell on the fragile shoulders of Fevronya Nikolaevna. She relied on her four sons ... Her sons-in-law Terenty Khatylaev and Sidor Neustroev were also good workers. But the war began. All sons and sons-in-law went to the front. Only women and small children remained in the large Malgin family.
Teacher: The hard days of waiting for news from the front dragged on. Letters from the front! Who of the older generation does not know homemade paper triangles.(envelopes are triangles). Each letter from the front contains a story about the fortitude of spirit, fortitude and courage of the Soviet people, who stood with their bosom in defense of the Motherland.
Teacher: Years passed, and more and more often letters came to the villages in which it was said; “He died… he died the death of the brave… the soldiers did not return from the battle. There were funerals ... They burned hearts, dressed women in black, orphaned children.
…Sometimes Fevronya Nikolaevna received letters and begged the postman to read them right there. She herself sat, folded her wrinkled hands, which had become coarse from work, on her knees and nodded her head in agreement, trying to capture the mood in the lines, every word that only mother could understand. The mother received the last letter from the younger Vasily back in October 1942. He wrote that he was going to the front, that there were 100 kilometers left to Moscow ... After this letters stopped coming ... For almost two months Fevronya Nikolaevna did not know anything about the fate of her sons. And then I found out ...
Teacher: Almost a month later, she received two more notices. Four Malgins were killed: Alexey the Younger was killed in 1940 in the war with the White Finns; Alexey Sr., Peter, Vasily went missing at the end of 1942. Only Spiridon remained, lieutenant, deputy commander of the 8th rifle company of the 889th regiment of the 189th division.
Everyone fought, thinking only about defending their homeland, fought for every inch of the Pulkovo Heights, on the most decisive sectors of the Leningrad Front. The words of the address ... Spiridon and his comrades realized that right now they had to act, hit the enemy. And they struck Days, months of fierce fighting. The 900-day blockade was broken. In these battles on March 23, 1943. Spiridon Malgin died. Fevronya Nikolaevna lost her last son.
Teacher: Mother gave five sons, five of her lives ... The young sons died unexpectedly. The last hope was in the sons-in-law. But they did not live long either. Both returned from the war and died of old wounds ...
Teacher: Volleys of war have long since died down. But no running of time can erase the mother's grief from the memory ... And at the age of 82, Fevronya Nikolaevna is going to bow to the graves of her sons on a long journey. Not everyone dares to make the journey from Yakutia to Leningrad at this age. And she goes as part of a delegation that was supposed to visit the places where the soldiers fought - the Yakutians near Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Leningrad. At the lake. Ilmen in the village. Ustrika of the Novgorod region laid wreaths at the monument to the soldiers - Yakut people who died a heroic death in battles against fascism.
In spite of everything, life goes on. After this trip, Fevronya Nikolaevna Malgina, an honorary citizen of the Alekseevsky district, a personal pensioner, lived for another 8 years to the delight of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Fevronya Nikolaevna died on April 11, 1978. They buried her with all the honors in the village. Bayaga of the Alekseevsky district at the obelisk of Glory, next to the marble slabs, where the names of five sons are carved. The bright love of the mother, the feat of the sons-brothers Malgin will be an example for many generations, their life goes on.
Student: Admiring her, we remember the innumerable sacrifices suffered by our people in the last war.
Admiring before her, we remember the unfading exploits of the soldiers, whose hard work, sweat and blood and life has won our historical victory.
Admiring her, we bow our heads to mothers, whose hearts, tears, love, grief, whose incredible sacrifices helped us win the freedom and happiness of present and future generations. The example of Fevronya Nikolaevna Malgina's mother is worthy of the memory of people.
The story was included by volunteer teachers in the school curriculum for literature in the 5th, 7th and 9th grades.
An alarming whinny filled the area. Rather, it was not a neighing, but translated into human language, tearing the soul apart, a cry for help.
In a huge pit, fifteen meters in diameter and at least three or four deep, a foal was drowning in the cold March water. A well-fed stallion and a dense, undersized horse, apparently a first-born, a brown color with a beautiful mane and "white socks" on its legs, darted along the edge of the pit.
It was a horse family of one of the wealthy Kazakhs who lived in a private house not far from high-rise buildings. The horses roamed freely around the territory of the village and were favorites of both adults and children. They were so trusting that they even took sugar and bread from the hands of strangers. A teenager, a foal who was now in trouble, enjoyed special love.
A pit, dug by an excavator at the site of a burst of a water supply system three years ago, was located between the houses of a densely populated area and long ago turned into an unfenced lake filled with tap water constantly flowing there, into a thawed flood, and rain in the fall.
The clay soil did not allow the water to dry out.
In summer, the water was half evaporated, and in the pre-winter, the man-made lake, supplemented by rains, froze to the delight of the children. The children went sledging and ice skating, contrary to the prohibitions of their parents who fear for their lives. But, as they say, God spared people from great misfortune, but he did not save the foal ...
Stepping onto the surface covered with thin spring ice, the foal immediately fell through and was now trying to get out of the pit.
In a subtle teenage falsetto he tried to call on the parents who were rushing about for help, who, in anxiety, either ran to the edge, or looked anxiously at the curious people who were going to the scene of the incident. By the way, there were more and more of them; many rushed to work, to schools, took their children to kindergartens ...
The horse lowered its front legs and head to the edge of the pit and tried to calm the drowning son. But, seeing that the situation was dangerous, she jumped into the cold gray slime. The stallion followed her with a loud neigh.
The people standing nearby were enveloped in huge blobs of dirty spray and recoiled from the edge.
Now the whole family was wallowing in the mud, tearing the air with alarming cries. It was difficult to name a mash of mud, last year's grass and autumn fallen leaves mixed in one mass as water.
Both the father stallion and the horse tried to help, pushing with their muzzles, but the high bank did not give in to the foal, weakening with every minute. The fight lasted quite a long time.
The poor colt, supported on both sides by his parents, fell and fell down in exhaustion, plunging headlong into the muck. The slimy edges of the pit did not give him the opportunity to catch on to anything. Blood flowed from under the torn hooves.
The people standing with fear and pain looked at the tragedy unraveling before their eyes, but they could not help ...
The foal is completely weak. His parents were also running out of strength. Apparently, realizing that the struggle for the life of his son was useless, the stallion with an effort got out of the pit and silently began to watch the floundering horse and son, drooping his head. His eyes were wistfully covered with drag. A dirty gray slurry flowed from the body, which in the piercing wind, nicknamed by the Kazakhs, "Bishkunak", froze on it like a crust. A shiver ran through the stallion's body from time to time. Sometimes he whinnied invitingly, apparently in order to support and calm the drowning family.
And the deadly fight continued ...
The foal raised its head, which immediately wilted, as if knocked down, a hoarse moan escaping from its chest. By some miracle, he himself remained on the surface. Crawling out of fear and horror of what was happening from the orbits, the eyes looked at people pleadingly. He tried to take in as much air as possible with his open mouth, but his throat was already half filled with mud, and the stallion, panting, went back into the depths.
The mother, who had almost lost her strength, swam beside him, trying to push her son to the shore with her croup. But more and more often she gave herself a break.
From time to time they went into the abyss together. From the horse's mouth was no longer a whinny, but the same wheeze as that of a foal. Foam rolled over the surface in balls, shading the turbulent lake.
Parents taking their children to kindergarten tried not to linger and, having hastily glanced at the tragedy, quickly left. The rest, tired of watching, silently dispersed about their business, guiltily bowing their heads from impotence ...
Pressing his son to the slippery edge, kicking his legs, the horse and the foal fell silent. Mother's eyes, bloodshot from straining, looked at the morning sun, at the crowns of unblown trees, at the melting crowd of people and a dejected stallion.
Come on, come on, get out, - a boy of about ten begged the foal. He was already late for school. Unbuttoning his briefcase and pulling out his mother’s cheese sandwich, the teen handed it to the foal. And then he almost fell into a hole, but was grabbed by the hood by a man ...
Neither mother nor son reacted to anything. The foal's head could not hold out from impotence. He seemed to be in a deep swoon.
Both were again under the muddy slime.
Suddenly the horse disappeared headlong and dived under the motionless body of his son. Emitting an almost death rattle and raising a volcano of a dirty gray mass, she pushed the foal out of the pit with her back ...
He lay on the bare ground, unresponsive to anything.
The crowd gasped and moved away. The horse tried to get out for another ten minutes and, finally, climbed out of the hole. Trembling with all her body, she immediately began to lick the dirt off the stallion, pushing it with her nose to the side and helping to get up.
A stallion approached them and began to lightly bite his son's withers with his teeth. Finally, the cub got up and walked slowly on shaking legs, leaning on the side of the mother.
On the other hand, a little apart from them, their father walked, ready to support them at any moment ...
They walked slowly along the road, huddled closely, and supporting each other. With tears in their eyes, people saw off the horse family, which taught everyone a lesson of boundless love for a child and admired the Mother's feat ... Truly, great is love, even horse love! ..
Reviews
The story is amazing. It is imperative that you send him to a serious thin competition. works (Writer of the Year, Debut, etc.) It would be nice to offer him to a serious book publisher, there he will be immediately accepted and included in the collection. Such stories should be included in the textbook "Rodnaya Rech" for primary school students, this will be of great educational value for children. Be sure to contact the Department of Public Education of your regional center, they will tell you ... and if they are serious people, they will simply have to help you!
