Dmitry Komar
Despite his young age, by August 1991, Dmitry Alekseevich Komar was no longer used to military action. At the age of 18, he served in Afghanistan, was shell-shocked twice and returned home with three medals. And this despite the fact that Dmitry had heart problems as a child - the young man had a thickened bundle of His. With such a diagnosis, he might not have been accepted into the Airborne Forces at all, but Dmitry trained hard and never focused on the illness.
“In Afghanistan, they accompanied convoys with fuel tankers. They were practically living targets. The dushmans shot them from an ambush at point-blank range.<…>Of the 120 people in their company, no more than 20 remained alive,” the mother of the deceased, Lyubov Komar, told Moskovsky Komsomolets in an interview.
Also, according to Dmitry’s mother, her son always rushed to help those who needed it. For example, he once protected a random passer-by from rapists, and shortly before the tragic events of August, he saved people caught in a landslide in the Krasnodar Territory.
White House Defenders Memorial Concert, 1991
Dmitry’s plans did not include participation in rallies, but his opinion changed after Alexander Vladimirovich Rutskoi appealed to the “Afghans” with a request to defend the White House. This decision became fatal: on the night of August 21, Dmitry Komar was crushed by an infantry fighting vehicle. According to some reports, the deceased was intoxicated.
Ilya Krichevsky
Ilya Maratovich Krichevsky also served in the army, but this area did not particularly attract him. The man loved art more: he studied to be an architect and then enjoyed working in his profession, writing poems, drawing wonderfully and attending a theater studio.
The ability to write poetry helped Ilya even in the army: at the request of his colleagues, he composed rhymed congratulations for their brides, thanks to which he won the favor of the soldiers.
Also, Krichevsky, a Jew by nationality, was interested in religion. In 1991, he immersed himself in the study of the Torah, but further studies were not destined to take place.
“It was no coincidence, of course, that my brother was at the barricades that night. In general, he was a caring person, as they say, a raw nerve,” recalled Marina, Ilya’s sister. The woman noted that a colleague called Krichevsky to defend democracy. The acquaintance, however, soon disappeared into the crowd, and Ilya some time later was mortally wounded in the head.
Vladimir Usov
37-year-old Vladimir Aleksandrovich Usov, a native of the Latvian city of Ventspils, was engaged in economics - he was an employee of the Ikom enterprise. Not much information has been preserved about his biography. It is known that Vladimir served in military service in the Kaliningrad region and Belarus, but he did not devote the rest of his life to service - unlike, by the way, his own father. According to Vladimir’s mother, her son was too kind and modest for the army.
Parents of the victims
On the night of August 21, Vladimir Usov was crushed by the tracks of an infantry fighting vehicle. According to one version, he tried to get someone out from under the BMP, but as a result he himself died.
“I would like to believe that Dima, Volodya and Ilya turned the tide of events in August 1991. If the guys had not stopped the armored vehicles, there could have been a lot of victims,” says Sofya Usova, Vladimir’s mother.
Ilya Maratovich Krichevsky(February 3, Moscow - August 21, Moscow) - Soviet architect, one of the three killed defenders of the “White House” during the August 1991 putsch. Hero of the Soviet Union (1991)
Biography
When the demonstrators, trying to stop the movement of the infantry fighting vehicle towards Smolenskaya Square, poured gasoline (a fire mixture) on the infantry fighting vehicle No. 536, and the vehicle caught fire, the crew that abandoned it began to run across to the neighboring infantry fighting vehicles under a hail of stones and metal rods. While boarding BMP No. 521, two of the crew members of the burning vehicle, covering the retreat of their comrades, fired warning shots into the air. At that moment, Krichevsky rushed to the BMP and received a fatal wound to the head.
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Literature
- Sverdlov F. D. In the ranks of the brave: Essays on Jews - Heroes of the Soviet Union. - M., 1992.
Notes
Links
Website "Heroes of the Country".
- // amkworks113.ru.
Excerpt characterizing Krichevsky, Ilya Maratovich
“Excuse me, young lady, you can’t do this,” said the maid holding Natasha’s hair.- Oh, my God, well, later! That's it, Sonya.
-Are you coming soon? – the countess’s voice was heard, “it’s already ten.”
- Now. -Are you ready, mom?
- Just pin the current.
“Don’t do it without me,” Natasha shouted, “you won’t be able to!”
- Yes, ten.
It was decided to be at the ball at half past ten, and Natasha still had to get dressed and stop by the Tauride Garden.
Having finished her hair, Natasha, in a short skirt, from which her ballroom shoes were visible, and in her mother’s blouse, ran up to Sonya, examined her and then ran to her mother. Turning her head, she pinned the current, and, barely having time to kiss her gray hair, again ran to the girls who were hemming her skirt.
The issue was Natasha's skirt, which was too long; Two girls were hemming it, hastily biting the threads. The third, with pins in her lips and teeth, ran from the Countess to Sonya; the fourth held her entire smoky dress on her raised hand.
- Mavrusha, rather, my dear!
- Give me a thimble from there, young lady.
- Soon, finally? - said the count, entering from behind the door. - Here's some perfume for you. Peronskaya is already tired of waiting.
“It’s ready, young lady,” said the maid, lifting the hemmed smoky dress with two fingers and blowing and shaking something, expressing with this gesture an awareness of the airiness and purity of what she was holding.
Natasha began to put on her dress.
“Now, now, don’t go, dad,” she shouted to her father, who opened the door, still from under the haze of her skirt, which covered her entire face. Sonya slammed the door. A minute later the count was let in. He was in a blue tailcoat, stockings and shoes, perfumed and oiled.
- Oh, dad, you are so good, dear! – Natasha said, standing in the middle of the room and straightening the folds of the haze.
“Excuse me, young lady, allow me,” said the girl, standing on her knees, pulling off her dress and turning the pins from one side of her mouth to the other with her tongue.
- Your will! - Sonya cried out with despair in her voice, looking at Natasha’s dress, - your will, it’s long again!
Natasha moved away to look around in the dressing table. The dress was long.
“By God, madam, nothing is long,” said Mavrusha, crawling on the floor behind the young lady.
“Well, it’s long, so we’ll sweep it up, we’ll sweep it up in a minute,” said the determined Dunyasha, taking out a needle from the handkerchief on her chest and getting back to work on the floor.
At this time, the countess entered shyly, with quiet steps, in her current and velvet dress.
- Ooh! my beauty! - the count shouted, - better than all of you!... - He wanted to hug her, but she pulled away, blushing, so as not to crumple.
“Mom, more on the side of the current,” Natasha said. “I’ll cut it,” and she rushed forward, and the girls who were hemming, did not have time to rush after her, tore off a piece of smoke.
- My God! What is this? It's not my fault...
“I’ll sweep it all away, it won’t be visible,” Dunyasha said.
- Beauty, it’s mine! - said the nanny who came in from behind the door. - And Sonyushka, what a beauty!...
At a quarter past ten they finally got into the carriages and drove off. But we still had to stop by the Tauride Garden.
Peronskaya was already ready. Despite her old age and ugliness, she did exactly the same thing as the Rostovs, although not with such haste (this was a common thing for her), but her old, ugly body was also perfumed, washed, powdered, and the ears were also carefully washed , and even, and just like the Rostovs, the old maid enthusiastically admired her mistress’s outfit when she came out into the living room in a yellow dress with a code. Peronskaya praised the Rostovs' toilets.
The Rostovs praised her taste and dress, and, taking care of her hair and dresses, at eleven o'clock they settled into their carriages and drove off.
Since the morning of that day, Natasha had not had a minute of freedom, and not once had time to think about what lay ahead of her.
In the damp, cold air, in the cramped and incomplete darkness of the swaying carriage, for the first time she vividly imagined what awaited her there, at the ball, in the illuminated halls - music, flowers, dancing, the sovereign, all the brilliant youth of St. Petersburg. What awaited her was so beautiful that she did not even believe that it would happen: it was so incongruous with the impression of cold, cramped space and darkness of the carriage. She understood everything that awaited her only when, having walked along the red cloth of the entrance, she entered the entryway, took off her fur coat and walked next to Sonya in front of her mother between the flowers along the illuminated stairs. Only then did she remember how she had to behave at the ball and tried to adopt the majestic manner that she considered necessary for a girl at the ball. But fortunately for her, she felt that her eyes were running wild: she could not see anything clearly, her pulse beat a hundred times a minute, and the blood began to pound at her heart. She could not accept the manner that would make her funny, and she walked, frozen with excitement and trying with all her might to hide it. And this was the very manner that suited her most of all. In front and behind them, talking just as quietly and also in ball gowns, guests entered. The mirrors along the stairs reflected ladies in white, blue, pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their open arms and necks.
Hot August 1991. "Swan Lake" on TV. Moscow. Putsch. Tanks. Dmitry Komar. Ilya Krichevsky. Vladimir Usov. Three young guys who died on the night of the 21st in a tunnel on the Garden Ring are the only sacred victims and posthumous heroes of the failed coup. Then they were 22, 28 and 37. Today - in another country and the new millennium - they would have turned 47, 53 and 62. A quarter of a century is still a lot...
Random heroes. That’s what they will be called later, after the final victory of democracy. Random victims... Anyone could have been in their place. Snatched from the crowd of thousands of defenders of the White House, nevertheless, only these three remained forever in the modern history of Russia.
Three monuments nearby on Vagankovo. On the morning of August 21, relatives come here and bring flowers. They met at a funeral and are still dating today. Less and less often, but definitely once a year - here, in the old cemetery. It's already twenty-four Augusts in a row.
Fathers Vladimir Usov and Dmitry Komar, mother Ilya Krichevsky, are no longer in this world. Time has dulled the pain. The memory remains...
Exhausted from melancholy,
I walked to the grave,
But behind the grave board
What I saw was not peace at all,
And the eternal battle,
Which in life you only dream about.
Ilya Krichevsky. Poet
First. Dmitry Komar
August 21, 1991. 0 hours 20 minutes. The center of Moscow in self-made barricades. A column of infantry fighting vehicles, on the orders of the putschists, is rushing from the White House towards the Garden Ring. A crowd of thousands, an uncontrollable sea of people timidly surrounds the tanks... A young guy jumps onto the armor of an infantry fighting vehicle, throws a tarpaulin over the viewing slot to blind the crew... The attacker is thrown to the ground, a shot is heard. But he gets up and, wounded, nervously rushes at the iron colossus again. The landing hatch swings open from the impact, the driver suddenly accelerates, and the boy flies down. And he freezes on the ground covered in blood...
Dima really dreamed of flying. Become a pilot, recalls Lyubov Komar. - We have a military family, my husband is a major. But the medical commission rejected my son for health reasons and found heart problems. But he still continued to go to an airfield near Moscow and jump with a parachute. He was preparing himself to be a paratrooper, I knew about it, I was worried, of course, but what can you do, it was his choice. He joined the army at the age of 17. On November 6 he turned 18, but the conscription ended in October... And I begged the military commissar to take him earlier, they later said that I was crazy, but he too wanted to get into the Airborne Forces, and this could only be done in the autumn conscription.
The whole class accompanied him. Except for two friends who have already left to serve. “I can’t say that Dimka played favorites; there were times when he disrupted classes. The teachers complained that sometimes he would say something like that, the whole class would laugh and couldn’t stop... But for some reason I didn’t want to join the Komsomol. He said that they take both excellent students and poor students there, indiscriminately, but this is wrong, unfair.”
And it immediately became clear that Afghan was waiting for him. Mid-80s, the worst of it. Three companies were in training - one was sent to Central Asia, the second to criminal Czechoslovakia, the third to Kabul. “There was an opportunity to transfer him, but Dima refused... After his return, he spoke sparingly about that war: “Mom, you don’t need to know about this, it was too scary there.” My son just had pity on my heart.”
He was a very ordinary guy, his mother emphasizes. Only very fair. The day before he promised her that he would never go to the White House, near which, as it seemed in those days, the entire capital had gathered.
Dima really didn’t think about going anywhere,” continues Lyubov Komar. - Later his friends told me how it was. They shouted into the bullhorn that Rutskoi was calling on Afghans to defend democracy in Russia. And mine were already approaching the metro to go home from work. The son turned around and said to his comrades: that’s it, guys, I’m going, my name is called. He's an Afghan! But Dima was very worried that I would worry, we had an agreement since school - if you are delayed somewhere, be sure to call. We lived then in Istra, near Moscow. There was no telephone at home yet. So he called the deputy for the rear in our military town and asked him to tell my mother, that is, me, that everything was fine, that he was staying overnight in Moscow with his classmates... I didn’t seem to worry. After all, I warned you. But all evening I walked around as if in prostration, as if I had been pumped full of pills, this had never happened before... I went to bed at twenty minutes past twelve. It was as if something had suddenly let go... Just when he was killed.
Second. Ilya Krichevsky
The hatch of the BMP swings open from the impact, the driver sets off, the unfamiliar boy freezes abruptly on the ground... Under a hail of stones and bottles of gasoline, the crew of the torn apart BMP, fleeing, runs to neighboring cars. Covering their retreat, they fire wherever they hit. A stray random bullet - and another person falls... Fatal through and through to the head. 0 hours 30 minutes.
Recorded on an old reel. Amateur poetry evening. We gathered in someone's kitchen. Friends. Familiar. Neighbours.
"Good evening! We are very glad that you came here today. Take off your dark glasses, take the cotton wool out of your ears, open your souls,” a soft young voice. The speaker introduces himself: “Ilya Krichevsky, poet.” So far, little known. But this is temporary. He is 28. He survived Lermontov, but Pushkin’s thirty-seven is still almost ten years old, a whole century.
Real poets, as we know, die young. All Ilya’s poems are about that.
Thank you friend for talking to me
As if with a living person,
And I am deader than dead,
Although hearts are beating.
It's like we're just sleeping.
Our dad is an architect, quite successful, so the question was not asked where my brother and I would go - of course, into the architectural, well-trodden path, a worthy, real profession, not like some poetry or theater, which my brother simply raved about, - Marina Krichevskaya, Ilya’s sister, smiles sadly.
Intelligent family. So Moscow-Moscow. During vacation with parents by car to Crimea or Gagra. To the pioneer camp in the summer. We read smart books, watched good movies.
A black-haired guy with incredible eyes. It’s as if he’s looking not at the person, but into the very depths. This is Ilya in all photographs.
At night I read my poems to my mother. He was especially close to his mother. He told her that he was going to quit his design cooperative and still take the risk of going to the theater. Inessa Naumovna Krichevskaya then regularly went to the trial of the State Emergency Committee, did not miss a single meeting, until she realized: it was useless - the perpetrators would not be found.
They say these were political years, everyone around was just talking about politics, congresses were broadcast on television, the country was falling apart, there were some kind of disputes... You know, personally, I can’t remember anything like that. “All this was very far from us, from our family, from Ilyusha,” Marina assures.
Everything passed by the Krichevskys. If it weren't for August '91. “We searched in hospitals and morgues. He didn't have any documents with him. Then it was considered normal to go for a walk without a passport... Surprisingly, Ilyusha went to defend the White House precisely purposefully. Together with a friend. When confusion began in the tunnel, the comrade disappeared somewhere. Well, God be his judge... He didn’t answer calls afterwards either. It’s good that he at least mentioned our last name when Ilyusha was taken away dead. And on the morning of the 21st, my friend called and said: on the radio they are talking about some Krichevsky, that he died... We are two years apart. I was younger than him. Then, in '91. Now, of course, older. I remember how my brother kept looking for himself. Everything was rushing and rushing... But this is in creativity. But he was completely apolitical, and I still don’t have an answer to the question: why did he go there after all, to the White House, at what command of his soul?
Third. Vladimir Usov
A random bullet is fatal through and through to the head. Shouts: “Bastard! Scum! You killed him! The third man rushes to the aid of the guy who jumped onto the armor of the infantry fighting vehicle. He tries to take him away from under the tracks and falls under the tank himself, cut off by another shot... 0 hours 40 minutes. August 21, 1991.
Early 50s. On November 7, sailors from Leningrad visited the girls of the pedagogical institute, future teachers, at their Moscow alma mater. After the parade on Red Square. Fit, handsome men in uniform stayed for the gala evening. Then, of course, there was dancing. There they met. Future Rear Admiral Alexander Usov and his wife Sophia, teacher of Russian language and literature, parents of Vladimir Usov.
We traveled around the Union a lot. After all, I married a lieutenant. We were in Magadan, in the Baltic states, even in Belarus - a training detachment of our flotilla was stationed there. And Volodya was born in 1954 in the Latvian town of Ventspils, recalls Sofya Petrovna Usova.
He was the oldest of the dead - 37. Family, 15-year-old daughter. Now at that age they are still jumping around nightclubs, but then they were quite mature.
According to witnesses, Usov did not get under the bullets. He just tried to pull a complete stranger out from under the tank. The son of an officer - how could he have done otherwise?
Maybe it was just Dmitry Komar. Or Ilya Krichevsky...
The tank and the man underneath were tossed in different directions. The deceased Vladimir Usov was buried in a closed coffin. There was a question about burying all three on Red Square, among the revolutionaries and general secretaries, but here the families categorically opposed. We agreed on the famous Vagankovsky - especially since it is located not far from the site of the tragedy, you can walk there.
They did not know each other during their lifetime. Until my last few seconds. And they were forever connected after death - by one grave covered with granite. “When I think about this now, it seems to me that it was these three seemingly random victims that ultimately stopped the bloodshed, prevented even more bloodshed from happening, and horrified everyone,” says Sofya Petrovna Usova. She is 86, the entire history of the country has passed before her eyes.
The commander jumped out of the opened hatch into the darkness, grabbed a pistol from his holster and shouted: “I’m not a killer, but an officer, I don’t want any more victims, move away from the cars, the soldiers are following orders!” - rushed to a nearby infantry fighting vehicle, shooting into the air as he went. The crowd froze. The tanks stopped. (From the memories of eyewitnesses.)
“It’s hard for me to say, this was my only son... But I was able to survive his death. What was left to do? My husband and I lived for 57 years, we lived well, we managed to have a golden wedding. Now my great-granddaughter is growing up, Milena, she’s 12 - Volodin’s granddaughter.”
Requiem for three
As a schoolgirl, I remember those days very well: the windows in every apartment were wide open - it was August, it was hot, the antediluvian tube TVs were turned on at full volume. An endless human river spills out towards Vagankovo. And through the bitterness - some kind of aching bright feeling that we had won. And then everything will only be fine. “Sorry for not saving you,” Yeltsin booms, addressing the parents of the killed. And he promises to break, but not to let him down, to make sure that the memory of the martyrs lives forever.
But the Golden Stars of Heroes of the Soviet Union from Gorbachev were awarded to the families only six months later. When such a country - the USSR - no longer existed on the map. What then?
The trial of the State Emergency Committee, which did not end well, the accused were released. The criminal case against the crew of the ill-fated infantry fighting vehicle, which suppressed and shot people in a narrow tunnel, was also soon dropped due to the lack of evidence of a crime.
To be honest, I didn’t hate these soldiers. Why judge them, they were simply following orders,” Lyubov Komar throws up his hands.
The cause of death on Ilyusha’s death certificate is: a bullet wound to the head. But whose shot was and from which direction, we will probably never know, says Marina Krichevskaya.
The grateful authorities gave the heroes' parents an apartment each. In October 1993, Lyubov Komar watched the shooting of the White House from a balcony on Rublyovka. It was as if time had turned back, and she was reliving the death of her son. “Only it’s even scarier - because it’s right in front of my eyes.”
Dima had a fiancee. Masha,” continues Lyubov Akhtyamovna. - He was going to introduce us. We met at a funeral. Masha already has her own children who are adults. My grandson is growing up from my youngest son... Masha came to see me several times. One day we were drinking tea, and suddenly it turned out that her husband was freezing outside. He's embarrassed to come to us. Although I’m glad that everything turned out well for her, and Dima would be very happy about it. Because life goes on.
Then there were other wars, a great many funerals, the wheel turned: gangster chaos, zinc coffins from Chechnya, thousands of murdered boys returned to their mothers - against this background, the accidental death of three in August 1991 seems illusory, somehow unreal. Young people will probably not remember these names.
The only film captured the moment of their death. “Bastard! Scum! What are you doing - you killed him!”
Now this would be replicated on smartphones, liked on social networks, and played out in Internet memes.
We have become different. So is the country. And our whole world, which has stepped into the third millennium. Tougher, more ruthless, more indifferent. “This blood of Volodya, Dima and Ilya - it horrified everyone and... stopped them then. But would three dead now be enough? - Sofya Petrovna Usova asks a rhetorical question.
A quarter of a century has passed. What would you become, Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krichevsky, Vladimir Usov? Are they really like us? Or would this world change if you still remained alive...
Architect of the design and construction cooperative "Kommunar" (Moscow). One of the three killed defenders of the White House during the August 1991 coup.
Born in Moscow in the family of an employee, a Jew. In 1980 he graduated from Moscow secondary school No. 744 and in 1986 from the Moscow Architectural Institute. He worked as an architect at State Design Institute No. 6. In 1986-88 he served in the ranks of the Soviet Army, junior sergeant. Then he worked as an architect at the Kommunar design and construction cooperative. Ilya Krichevsky wrote poetry; posthumously they were included in anthologies (“Strophes of the Century” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and others).
On August 19-21, 1991, during the period of activity in Moscow of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (GKChP), I. M. Krichevsky was among the citizens protesting against the entry of troops into Moscow and demanding democratic changes in the country. He died on the night of August 20-21, 1991 in the area of an underground tunnel near Smolenskaya Square, where eight infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) of the Taman Motorized Rifle Division were blocked at the intersection of Tchaikovsky and Novy Arbat streets.
When citizens, trying to stop the movement of the BMP column towards Smolenskaya Square, poured gasoline (a fire mixture) on BMP No. 536, and the vehicle caught fire, the crew that left it began to move to neighboring BMPs under a hail of stones and metal rods. While boarding BMP No. 521, two of the crew members of the burning vehicle, covering the retreat of their comrades, fired warning shots into the air. At that moment, Krichevsky, calling on the soldiers to stop, took a step towards the BMP and received a through and fatal wound to the head.
By decree of the President of the USSR of August 24, 1991, “for courage and civic valor shown in defending democracy and the constitutional system of the USSR,” Krichevsky was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal (No. 11659).
He was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovskoye cemetery, where a monument was erected on his grave. A memorial sign in honor of I.M. Krichevsky was installed above the underground tunnel at the intersection of the Garden Ring with Novy Arbat Street in Moscow.
Awards
Hero of the Soviet Union
Awarded the Order of Lenin, Medal “Defender of Free Russia” No. 2.
One of the last Heroes of the Soviet Union.