Exactly 80 years ago, on February 23, 1943, a soldier of the 2nd separate rifle battalion of the Siberian Volunteer Brigade named after Stalin accomplished a feat that Russia will never forget. On Defender of the Fatherland Day, Izvestia remembers Private Alexander Matrosov.
On January 17, 1943, the troops of the Kalinin Front liberated the city of Velikiye Luki. On January 18, units of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts broke through the blockade of Leningrad. On February 5, 1943, Private Alexander Matrosov turned 19 years old. The fate of the war was decided not only in Stalingrad, but also in the north-west of the country. Colonel Mikhail Aleksankin, head of the intelligence headquarters of the Kalinin Front, reported: “During the year, the enemy created a number of centers of resistance on the front line of defense, interacting with each other in a well-organized fire system. Knots of resistance have been created by the enemy at all heights of tactical importance, as well as in populated areas. I had to cut these knots. The battles in the Pskov and Tver regions were fierce. Matrosov, like his comrades, was preparing for a battle not for life, but for death. It was necessary to break through the defenses of the Nazis near the village of Chernushki and cut the railway along which they supplied their troops in the Velikiye Luki region.
Fight for height
In those days, Matrosov, a submachine gunner, was also at the forefront. One could be proud of this: at that time, not everyone was trusted with automatic weapons, especially beginners. This means that the unfired private Matrosov was considered a trained fighter.
Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/
Alexander Matrosov
After a long and exhausting march, the guy managed to write a letter to his girlfriend – Lida Kurganova, whom he met as a cadet. “Now I want to talk to you about everything that I feel, that I experience. Yes, Lida, and I saw my comrades die. And today the battalion commander told the story of how one general died, he died, facing west. I love life, I want to live, but the front is such a thing that you live and live, and suddenly a bullet or a fragment puts an end to your life. But if I am destined to die, I would like to die like this general of ours – in battle and facing the west. Your Sasha.
And then the time came for the battle, which would be “the last and decisive” for Matrosov. The 2nd separate rifle battalion of the Stalin Siberian Volunteer Brigade went on the offensive. The task was almost impossible – to take the height into which the Germans had bitten tightly, free the village of Chernushki and move to Loknya, a large old village.
Photo: TASS / Eric Romanenko
The way for the fighters was blocked by three German bunkers (wood-and-earth firing points), from which it was possible to fire at the attackers. It was not easy even for gunners to open and destroy the bunker. In that battle, the Red Army managed to blow up two bunkers, but the third remained in the way of the fighters.
Three machine gunners tried to crawl closer to this bunker in order to stop the enemy at close range. All of them died on the outskirts of the German firing point. And then Matrosov took the initiative, knowing full well that this would most likely cost him his life. He rushed to the attack, along with him, Peter Ogurtsov, a more experienced soldier, a scout who had already participated in many battles, began to make his way to the bunker. But war does not always make out who is more experienced. On the outskirts of the bunker, a bullet stopped Ogurtsov. Seriously wounded, he was rescued after the battle. And Matrosov was approaching the embrasure. The comrades recalled that when he slashed at the firing point with an automatic burst, something exploded or smoked there. But the enemy machine gun did not let up. In the smoke, in the snowy twilight, Matrosov saw only his target and tried to crawl up to him from the flank. He managed to get closer, the bullets flew past.
German bunker near the village of Chernushki, the embrasure of which Alexander Matrosov closed with his body
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Swinging widely and quickly, he threw a grenade towards the bunker, and behind it the second. The fire has stopped. Inspired by the Red Army men, they went on the attack, but the exclamation of “Hurrah” blocked the chirping of the machine gun that was silent. The attack faltered. Then the fighter stood up to his full height and rushed to the bunker. Probably, he wanted to destroy the machine gunners, bombard them with grenades or interfere with firing by pushing the muzzle of a German gun, but in any case, Matrosov went to the fire with his chest to save the fighters who followed him. He died, shot through by a machine-gun burst, covering the embrasure with himself.
Those seconds decided the outcome of the battle. The fighters took the height and raised a red flag over Chernushka. Matrosov no longer saw this, just as he did not learn about another banner raised over the Reichstag in May 1945. But with his dash through the Pskov snow, he brought victory closer – at least for a few minutes. From such heroic moments the war was formed.
The first report on the feat, concise in a military way, was compiled immediately after the battle: “In the battle for the village of Chernushki, the Komsomol member Matrosov, born in 1924, committed a heroic deed – he closed the embrasure of the bunker with his body, which ensured the advancement of our shooters forward. Blackies are taken. The attack continues. I’ll post the details upon my return. Political department agitator senior lieutenant Volkov.
“Leveling at Alexander Matrosov!”
The hero did not remain an “unknown soldier”. A young military correspondent of the newspapers “For the Motherland!” wrote about the feat of Alexander Matrosov. and “Battle Banner”, and in the future the famous writer Mikhail Bubennov. He found words that shocked many: “What pushed Matrosov to this great feat? Perhaps unbearable pain squeezed his heart when he saw how the Nazis had dug up the calm land here from time immemorial? Maybe he saw these birch trees and remembered how their enemies defile them, cutting them down for crosses? Maybe he looked at the gloomy winter sky and thought that his enemies smoked everything, burning our villages and cities? But we know: Guards Private Alexander Matrosov threw himself with his chest into the embrasure of the enemy bunker, where death raged, with one desire – to defeat it, to defeat it in the name of life. Eternal glory to you, great Russian warrior! We kneel at your grave.”
The original burial place of Alexander Matrosov
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Bubennov emphasized that Matrosov accomplished his feat on the day of the 25th anniversary of the Red Army, February 23. That year, the whole world celebrated this holiday with hope, thousands of people sent congratulations to Moscow – from Winston Churchill to Ernest Hemingway.
The supreme commander drew attention to the feat of the private. Contemporaries retold the remark of Joseph Stalin: “This is how to fight! Alignment with Alexander Matrosov! By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 19, 1943, for the exemplary performance of the combat missions of the command in the fight against the German invaders and the courage and heroism shown at the same time, the Red Army soldier was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
In imperial Russia at the beginning of the 19th century, a tradition developed – especially distinguished soldiers after death or death were forever enlisted in the lists of units. This tradition was revived in the Red Army, and Matrosov was the first to receive such an honor. Since then, every day at roll call, the soldiers of the 1st company of the 254th Guards Regiment called him: “Private Alexander Matrosov!” And the answer was: “He died for the glory of Soviet weapons in the fight against the German invaders near the village of Chernushki.”
The glorious 254th Guards Rifle Regiment was named after Matrosov. For the first time, a military unit received the name of an ordinary. Not a commander, not a high-ranking nobleman, not a famous revolutionary, not even a commander, but an ordinary fighter, a soldier – one of the millions who withstood the most difficult trials of the war.
Ordinary soldiers of the 254th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment named after Alexander Matrosov
Photo: RIA Novosti / P. Kuznetsov
Like other soldiers who fell in that battle, Matrosov was buried near the village of Chernushki, Loknyansky district, Samolukovsky volost. where he accomplished the feat. But several years passed after the war, and the flow of people to the grave of the private did not dry up. And he was solemnly reburied in Staraya Russa. A memorial complex was erected at the site of the death of the hero.
Mystery Matrosov
The origin of the hero is still controversial. According to the official version, he was born in Yekaterinoslav (later Dnepropetrovsk). He lost his parents early and was brought up in the Ivanovo regime orphanage. At the age of 15 he was sent to the Kuibyshev car repair plant. Matrosov did not like it there, the guy ran away and soon ended up in the Ufa children’s labor colony for violating the passport regime. From there, after the start of the war, he signed up as a volunteer in the Red Army. Further Krasnokholmsk Infantry School in the Orenburg region, after which Matrosov was sent to the front line.
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
But in 1952, residents of the village of Kunakbaeva, Bashkiria, recognized their fellow villager, Shakiryan Mukhametyanov, from the front-line photograph of Matrosov. He was the fourth child in the family, he lost his mother early. In 1932 he went to school – and it was then that the first graders were photographed. This hazy image was extremely helpful to the researchers. The Research Institute of Forensic Science under the Ministry of Justice studied this childhood photograph, compared it with Matrosov’s front-line photographs, and concluded that, with a high probability, the photographs depict the same person.
In the orphanage, Shakiryan was nicknamed a sailor, and soon he received official documents in the name of Alexander Matrosov Matrosov. The practice was common at the time. After that, he came to his native village several times and asked to be called Sasha, not Shakir. Further reminds the official version. The young man was sent to the Krasnokholmsk Infantry School, accepted into the Komsomol. True, he did not have time to graduate from college: at the beginning of 1943, an order came to send cadets to the active army.
But there is a third version, according to which Alexander Matrosov was born in the village of Vysoky Kolok, Stavropol district, Samara province. Sasha’s mother, left with three children without a husband, gave him to the Melekessky orphanage to save him from starvation. And then his wanderings began – a factory, a colony and attempts to break through to the front from the first days of the war.
Colleagues of Alexander Matrosov
Photo: RIA Novosti / P. Kuznetsov
There is no doubt only that in his youth Alexander managed to take a sip of dashing, but did not lose his spiritual core, and when the time came to defend the Motherland, he did not look for excuses.
Slava Matrosova
Alexander Matrosov lived on earth for 19 years and 19 days. The soldier, almost a boy who died in his first serious battle, became a model of valor for all time. A symbol of self-sacrifice. Schoolchildren memorized poems about him, already in 1944 a postage stamp dedicated to the hero soldier was issued. In 1947, the film directed by Leonid Lukov “Private Alexander Matrosov” was released.
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Before Matrosov, 106 Soviet soldiers performed a similar feat. The first hero to close the embrasure of an enemy bunker with his body was the junior political instructor of the 125th tank regiment of the 28th tank division Alexander Pankratov – at the beginning of the war, in its darkest days, on August 24, 1941, in the battle for Spas-Nereditsa, near Novgorod . Of the Red Army soldiers who repeated the feat of Matrosov, more than 400 people were identified. 166 of them were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the rest – also posthumously – received other orders.
In the minds of many, it is Matrosov who represents all those who went headlong into machine guns, who despised death. For every front-line soldier who has passed through the fire, the name of this private is sacred. At all times, soldiers who consciously gave their lives to save their comrades and decide the outcome of the battle were highly honored as heroes.
Slava Matrosova inspired, helped thousands of future defenders of the Motherland to make the most important choice in life. How many 18-year-old volunteers went to the draft board, carefully keeping in their inner pocket a newspaper page with an essay about the exploit of Matrosov! And how many boys attributed to themselves a year or two in order to quickly be at the front and defend their homeland, like Matrosov, selflessly and courageously!
Such is the law of historical memory. It is impossible to name all the heroes by name, but in our hearts we pay tribute to the hundreds of the fallen when we call one last name – Matrosov. And this is also the unique role of the “right-flank private” in the annals of the Great Patriotic War.
The author is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Istorik”
