Associate Professor of the Department of State and Municipal Administration. Department "Psychology, Sociology, State and Municipal Administration"

Born in the village of Malaya Treshchevka, Zemlyansky district, Voronezh region. After graduating from eight classes of high school, he left for Voronezh and began working as a mechanic at an aircraft factory. At the same time he studied at the evening school of working youth, which he graduated on the eve of the war.

Having received a certificate of maturity, he entered the Voronezh Military School of Communications, but he had to complete his studies already in Samarkand, where the school was soon evacuated. In December 1941, A. Ya. Sukharev became the commander of a communications platoon of the 237th Infantry Regiment of the 69th Infantry Division of the 50th Army, which was then stationed in the Uzbek town of Chirchik. Two months later, as part of the regiment, he was sent to the front line. For more than two and a half years, Alexander Yakovlevich fought on various fronts: Western, Central, 1st and 2nd Belorussian. With battles, he went through a thorny path from Moscow to the Vistula. He commanded a platoon, a company, was the chief of communications of the regiment, and acted as the chief of staff of the regiment.

For participation in the battles and the extraordinary bravery and courage shown at the same time, A. Ya. Sukharev was awarded the Orders of the Patriotic War II degree (October 1942), the Patriotic War I degree (July 1943), the Red Star (December 1943) and the Red Banner (July 1944) . In September 1944, after being seriously wounded while crossing the Narew River in Poland, Sukharev was sent to the rear. During the year he was treated in hospitals in the cities of Sumy and Kharkov.

For several months, Sukharev, while remaining in military service, served as head of the department of the Voronezh Military District Communications Directorate. After demobilization in July 1946, he entered the Telman Car Repair Plant, where he was engaged in educational work among young people. In March 1947 he was sent to Komsomol work. By this time he was already a student at the All-Union Law Correspondence Institute.

In 1947-1950, A. Ya. Sukharev was the head of the department of pioneers and the second secretary of the Zheleznodorozhny district committee of the Komsomol of Voronezh, an instructor and deputy head of the department of propaganda and agitation of the Voronezh regional committee of the Komsomol. In September 1950 he was transferred to Moscow, to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Two months after that, he graduated from the VUZI and received a law degree. In the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, Alexander Yakovlevich held the positions of instructor, responsible organizer, head of the sector, deputy head of the department of Komsomol bodies, and, finally, in April 1958, became head of the international department of the Komsomol Central Committee. He held this position for a year and a half. Sukharev took an active part in the preparation of all major events held under the auspices of the Central Committee. In particular, the sixth (Moscow, 1957) and seventh (Vienna, 1959) World Festivals of Youth and Students, for which he received several Certificates of Honor of the Komsomol Central Committee. In 1956 he was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor for participation in the development of virgin lands.

In December 1959, A. Ya. Sukharev was promoted to an even higher post - to the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Here he worked for more than ten years, at first holding the position of an instructor, and then deputy head of the department of administrative and trade and financial bodies of the Central Committee of the CPSU for the RSFSR and head of the sector of the department of administrative bodies of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Since September 1970 A.

Y. Sukharev worked in the organs of justice. At that time, the Ministry of Justice of the USSR had just been recreated, which was liquidated back in the mid-1950s at the whim of N. S. Khrushchev. The Ministry of Justice of the USSR was headed by V. I. Terebilov. Alexander Yakovlevich Sukharev became his first deputy and a member of the collegium of the USSR Ministry of Justice.

A. Ya. Sukharev served in the system of the Ministry of Justice for almost 18 years. Until 1984, he was the first deputy minister of justice of the USSR, and then - the minister of justice of the RSFSR. During this time he defended his dissertation at the Academy of Social Sciences and received the degree of candidate of legal sciences (1978). Two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1967 and 1971) and Orders of the October Revolution (1977), Friendship of Peoples (1983) and Patriotic War I degree (1985) were added to his awards. In October 1973, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR awarded him an Honorary Diploma, and in April 1987 awarded him the honorary title of Honored Lawyer of the RSFSR. He was also elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1984).

In the ministry, A. Ya. Sukharev paid much attention to the development of ties between Soviet lawyers and their foreign colleagues. He was elected a member of the board of the Association of Soviet Lawyers (in June 1986 he became its president), contributed to its entry into the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and became the first vice-president. He often led delegations of the country's lawyers on trips abroad, was involved in the preparation and holding of international conferences of lawyers, and spoke at them with reports and messages.

A. Ya. Sukharev does a lot of public work as a co-president of the World Association - Lawyers Against Nuclear Weapons (IALANA), a member of the Academic Council of the Institute of State and Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the presidium of the All-Union Society "Knowledge". Heads the public fund "Outstanding commanders and naval commanders of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945".

In 1988 A. Ya. Sukharev was sent to work in the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR. By decrees of February 26, 1988, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appointed him First Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR, approved him as a member of the board of the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, and awarded him the class rank of State Counselor of Justice, 1st class. Exactly three months later, on May 26, 1988, by a decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Alexander Yakovlevich Sukharev was appointed Prosecutor General of the USSR. In 1989 he became a People's Deputy of the USSR. He was elected a delegate to the XXVII Congress of the CPSU.

By the Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of October 15, 1990, signed by the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR A.I. Lukyanov, Sukharev was relieved of his duties as the Prosecutor General of the USSR, in connection with his retirement. In July 1996, the new Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Yu. I. Skuratov, appointed him director of the Research Institute for the Problems of Strengthening Law and Order under the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.

In December 1995, A. Ya. Sukharev was awarded the badge "Honorary Worker of the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation." In May 1996 he became a doctor of jurisprudence. He is the author of such works as "The Crisis of Legality Threatens Reforms", "The Criminal Cost of Social Prevention" and others (in total, he has published more than 150 works in Russia and abroad).

Under the editorship of A. Ya. Sukharev, the Legal Encyclopedic Dictionary (1984), the Big Encyclopedic Legal Dictionary (1997) and, finally, the fundamental Russian Legal Encyclopedia (1999), which included more than 4 thousand articles, were published. He took an active part in the development of many legislative acts, including the Federal Law on the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

In 1998, for his great contribution to the strengthening of the rule of law, active social and political activity and in connection with the 75th anniversary of his birth, Alexander Yakovlevich was awarded another award - the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 4th degree.

At present, A. Ya. Sukharev again works as director of the Research Institute for the Problems of Strengthening Law and Order at the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

In the turbulent times of perestroika, Sukharev was able to hold out in the chair of the USSR Prosecutor General for a little over two years. In those years, measures were taken in the country to overcome the so-called "stagnant period", there was an emancipation of the economic initiative, the expansion of political democracy, and the enrichment of the legal status of the individual. Prosecutorial supervision also became richer and more meaningful. It must be admitted that at that time the prosecutor's offices, in the words of Sukharev, were still "insufficiently savvy" in a number of practical aspects of human rights.

In the midst of "perestroika" extremism and nationalism began to raise their heads. Blood has already been shed in Sumgayit, a “Karabakh knot” has begun, and many months of strikes have begun. All this caused enormous damage to the country. In the new conditions, the bodies of the prosecutor's office and internal affairs were not up to par. At one of the meetings of the collegium of the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, Sukharev said that the prosecutors "overlooked the nationalist abscess, did not forestall the rampant unrest."

A few years after the start of "perestroika", the situation with crime sharply worsened in the country. The number of murders, grievous bodily harm, rape, robbery and robbery has increased. Dangerously growing mercenary crime, which largely determines the stability of criminal groups, both in the economy and in the criminal environment. Cases of the use of weapons, technical means by criminals, their more active opposition to law enforcement agencies have become more frequent. The economy was increasingly merging with the criminal environment. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Government of the USSR, considering the state of affairs with crime, recognized it as critical. Law enforcement agencies, including the prosecutor's office, were sharply criticized. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the resolution "On the decisive strengthening of the fight against crime" recognized the possibility of forming temporary committees to combat crime. Sukharev understood that in such conditions new, unconventional approaches to work were needed. This is what he set up subordinates.

Dear readers! The Academy of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation did an important job by establishing in 2015 in honor of the famous scientist and teacher, Doctor of Law, Professor, Honored Lawyer of the RSFSR, State Counselor of Justice Alexander Yakovlevich Sukharev, the annual international scientific and practical conference "Sukharev Readings". Two conferences were attended by domestic scientists and practitioners, specialists from neighboring countries. Alexander Yakovlevich also took part in each of these forums.

And here is another initiative of the Academy - the publication of a collection of works by this outstanding person. Alexander Yakovlevich has over two hundred works on a wide range of problems of jurisprudence, international legality and security, military topics, issues of nature conservation and human well-being.

The Sukharev Readings and the release of the collection are a sign of special respect and gratitude to the front-line hero, an outstanding statesman and public figure who devoted more than half a century of his labor activity to the establishment of the rule of law in the country. The merits of Alexander Yakovlevich are highly appreciated by the state, he is a holder of five military and six labor orders.

In his introductory article about A.Ya. Sukharev as a great scientist, a great leader, a true patriot, I base myself not only on the works presented in the collection, but also on others that I was familiar with before. My impressions of him are complemented by almost 30 years of acquaintance, which gradually grew into friendly relations, as well as joint service in the USSR Prosecutor's Office and the Research Institute for the Problems of Strengthening Law and Order under the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.

Despite his super respectable age, Alexander Yakovlevich is still strong in spirit. As the chief researcher of the Research Institute of the Academy, he makes a significant contribution to strengthening the rule of law and educating the younger generation, generously shares his invaluable experience and sovereign attitude in the media, youth audiences, labor collectives and veteran organizations, where he is willingly invited. Not so long ago, he said: “I remain on watch with the new Russian generation until we rise from our knees to the very heights.” This is such a restless person.

His creative portfolio includes monographs, textbooks, legal encyclopedias, commentaries on codes, articles, more than 60 reports on representative international and domestic platforms. The rich palette and scale of foreign events in which AY participated are striking. Sukharev, representing the interests of the country. His presentations at international

Alexander Yakovlevich has many foreign awards, but he especially appreciates the Order of Bulgaria "September 9, 1944". The Order was awarded to him for his advice and assistance in the rehabilitation of three Bulgarian citizens who were initially accused by an Italian court of involvement in the assassination attempt on the Pope. At the initiative of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, of which he was one of the leaders, Alexander Yakovlevich helped lawyers defend Bulgarians, realizing that the Moscow Kremlin could become the next stage in Cold War justice.

I think a special place in the work of AY. Sukharev was occupied by the recently published autobiographical book “The Prosecutor General of the USSR flips through the pages of memory”, in which he talks about his difficult, but exemplary life path. The book is interesting, you read without stopping, you feel the brilliant pen of a talented person. The author did a good job with archival material, retained in his never-fading memory many episodes from childhood, holy war, work in the main headquarters of the party, serving Themis. The book aroused great interest among readers, was supplemented and republished twice under the new title "At the Call of Truth."

Due to the limited volume, the collection contains a small part of the works of A.Ya. Sukharev. But they fully allow the reader to get acquainted with his unique experience of state-legal construction, versatile scientific talent, and writing talent. Impressive is the breadth of practical interests and the diversity of research issues that Alexander Yakovlevich was engaged in at different periods of his life. The papers deal with issues of constitutional legality, international law, legal education of the population and prevention of crimes, improvement of justice, advocacy and prosecutorial supervision, combating crime, including in the CIS countries, scientific training of legal personnel, etc.

Everything that comes from the pen of A.Ya. Sukharev, deserves attention, his conclusions and assessments are balanced and reasoned, linked to the complex realities of the political, economic, social, spiritual and moral life of the country, the specifics of its reforms, the costs and results of transformations. The works of the Soviet era often have not lost their significance, as they are consonant with today's "diseases" in Russia. A typical example is the most acute and long-standing problem of the prevalence and persistence of legal nihilism both in the past and now, and its disastrous consequences for the development of society. Alexander Yakovlevich was a pioneer and organizer of a great deal of work to overcome this disease in the country. But I will tell you more about this later, and I will continue about the labor and combat path of this extraordinary person.

AND I. Sukharev was born in 1923 into a peasant family, graduated from the 8th grade and at the age of 15 began his career at the Voronezh Aircraft Building Plant as an apprentice locksmith. In 1941, as an 18-year-old boy, after an accelerated graduation from the military school of communications, he went to the front, fought in the very heat of fierce battles, met with death more than once. At the age of 19 he was appointed head of the regimental communications service, at the age of 20 he became acting. chief of staff of the regiment with the rank of captain. For valor and heroism he was awarded 5 military orders. In 1944 he was seriously wounded and treated for a long time, in the summer of 1945 he was dismissed from the army.

In the post-war years, Alexander Yakovlevich graduated from a law school, postgraduate correspondence course and achieved significant heights in the Komsomol and party work, and then in a purely legal field. After ten years of work in the Central Committee of the CPSU, he forever inscribed his name in the history of two departments - justice and the prosecutor's office, consistently serving in them to this day for 47 years. Not for nothing in legal circles, and not only in them, he is called the patriarch of justice.

The personal contribution of A.Ya. Sukharev in the revival of the Ministry of Justice of the USSR and the justice authorities in the 70-80s. last century - for 14 years as First Deputy Minister of Justice of the USSR, then another 4 years - Minister of Justice of the RSFSR. His undoubted merit is the successful activity in coordinating legal work in the national economy, legal education and enlightenment of the population.

The Interdepartmental Coordinating Council for Legal Propaganda was created in the USSR Ministry of Justice, which abruptly turned the right to educational work in the country. For 17 years it was invariably led by A.Ya. Sukharev. Soft, intelligent, often self-ironic, a connoisseur of literature and art, he managed to involve in the work of the Council many well-known figures in science, literature, art and sports, who expanded the possibilities of the Council, overcame the callousness of officials who prevented innovations. He managed to get the government to take a decision on topical issues, to elevate the legal education of the population to the rank of state policy.

As a result, in those years, a system of legal education and enlightenment was formed, which gained a wide scope and had a positive impact on the behavior of people, in particular the younger generation, on the state of law and order and the prevention of crime. Much attention was paid to the legal and international education of young people, the course "Fundamentals of the Soviet State and Law" was taught in schools and technical schools, and "Fundamentals of Jurisprudence" was taught in vocational schools. Regular rights broadcasts were broadcast on radio and television. In 1971, the first issue of the popular magazine Man and Law, founded by the USSR Ministry of Justice, was published, which opened with an editorial by A.Ya. Sukharev “Your law, citizen!”, The circulation of the magazine, and it was interesting for everyone, from a housewife to a minister, reached 12 million copies in a few years, for which the publication was listed in the Guinness Book of Records. With the help of the All-Union Society "Knowledge" A.Ya. Sukharev initiated the creation of an extensive network of legal circles and schools, as well as over 3.5 thousand people's universities of legal knowledge for specialists in the national economy. Every year, about 2 million lectures on legal issues were read by members of the Knowledge Society. For 1971-1978 based on the emerging practice of A.Ya. Sukharev published 30 articles on the topics of legal education in leading journals and collections, which actually became a toolkit for the organizational and methodological support of this work for party and Soviet bodies, republican ministries and departments, regional and regional departments of justice. He paid much attention to the selection and training of legal personnel: judges, lawyers, notaries, legal advisers, their professionalism, integrity, participation in the legal education of citizens.

In 1978 A.Ya. Sukharev successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on legal education. The problems that he dealt with, not without success, are also characteristic of today's Russia, where the legal nihilism of the population goes off scale. But the solution of these issues is noticeably behind the work that was carried out in the country in the past. Therefore, with sadness, Alexander Yakovlevich writes in the book “At the Call of Truth”: “I hope for the revival of my hard-won brainchild - the system of legal education of the population as a leading component of crime prevention, the general culture of man and civil society.”

The merits of A.Ya. Sukharev in strengthening the rule of law and improving the activities of the prosecutor's office, first as the Prosecutor General of the USSR, and then during the long-term leadership of the Research Institute for the Problems of Strengthening Law and Order under the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.

I remember our joint work in the USSR Prosecutor's Office. Frankly speaking, it was the most difficult for him. He came here in 1988 at the height of perestroika, during a period of extraordinary socio-political situation, an unprecedented increase in crime, bloody ethnic conflicts, obvious separatist sentiments on the part of the union republics, and much more. This situation demanded adequate and energetic measures from the USSR Prosecutor General to "extinguish" these fires, organizing an investigation into criminal cases of mass riots and numerous murders. The profound transformations taking place in the country implied the renewal of the forms and methods of prosecutorial activity, the transfer of the prosecutor's office to a new mode of operation. AND I. Sukharev, having mobilized all his rich experience gained in the Central Committee of the CPSU and in the system of justice, identified the main bottlenecks at that time in the work of the prosecutor's office and took steps to eliminate them.

I remember the collegium of the USSR Prosecutor's Office, where he made a report on measures to improve the activities of subordinate bodies. There was a sense of serious preparation for the meeting, thoughtfulness of the proposals. In his speech, he paid much attention to the shortcomings in ensuring the unity of legality, the strict implementation of its requirements, counteracting “parochial” manifestations and other miscalculations in prosecutorial supervision. Taking into account the decisions taken, the emphasis in the work began to be more on strengthening supervision in the social sphere, protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens, and monitoring the activities of internal affairs and state security agencies. In the center and locally, new structures of the prosecutor's office were created and the existing structures were strengthened.

That time was a serious test of strength for Alexander Yakovlevich. He had to quickly make responsible and bold decisions, openly in the press and in sharp controversy at meetings of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, to oppose the growing parliamentary and other circles, who tried to defeat the prosecutor's office, eliminate the socio-political system and destroy the Soviet Union.

AND I. Sukharev stopped the pernicious spread of "rust" of lawlessness in the investigative and operational work, entering into a fierce battle with the investigators of the USSR Prosecutor's Office T. Gdlyan and N. Ivanov, treated kindly by the attention of the press, who, out of careerist motives, used rude, illegal methods in the investigation of criminal cases of abuse of officials in Uzbekistan. They fabricated cases against more than a hundred citizens, including prominent statesmen. Despite numerous complaints, the former leadership of the federal prosecutor's office did not take effective measures to curb violations of the law.

from Gdlyan and his group. AND I. Sukharev and his subordinates had to clean up this "blockage", including the fabricated so-called Kremlin case. It was necessary to stop presumptuous investigators, because "gdlyanovshchina", having penetrated deeply into the law enforcement system, could throw society far back, into the tragic past.

As the head of the Department for Supervision of Investigation of Particularly Important Cases, I was then preparing a collegium of the USSR Prosecutor's Office on the unsatisfactory prosecutorial supervision of the work of the Gdlyan group, so I know firsthand about its deeds. And Alexander Yakovlevich won, although he was persecuted in the media, at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, in the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR they pasted vile leaflets, demanded removal from his post. No matter how bitter and insulting he was, he persevered and won a major moral victory. I remember the party meeting of the Prosecutor General's Office, which condemned the intrigues of Gdlyan and his associates. They were expelled from the prosecutor's office and a criminal case was initiated against them.

Although A.Ya. Sukharev served as Prosecutor General of the USSR for a little over two years, and then left of his own accord, this period can be safely equated with his difficult years at the front. As in the war, he remained a man of duty and honor. I also note in particular that at that difficult time from different

the parties heard voices about the need to "castrate" the prosecutor's office, but A.Ya. Sukharev built up its potential, created new prosecutor's offices and special units to strengthen the rule of law in the country. And when they shouted “Down!” to him from the rostrum of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR and from the crowd, he, for example, formed the Volga Interregional Environmental Prosecutor's Office and its bodies in many subjects of the Federation, which to this day are successfully operating, protecting the rights of citizens to a favorable environment. environment and interests of the state in the field of rational use of water resources.

A passionate champion of law and justice, A.Ya. Sukharev continued his line on the scientific front, moving from the USSR Prosecutor's Office to the Research Institute, first to the position of deputy, and then the director of the Institute. Here his talent as a major organizer of science, a realistic thinker with a sovereign attitude of a person, manifested itself. Despite the sharp turn in the course of the country, the coming to power of people of a different worldview, or even without it at all, A.Ya. Sukharev avoided the rabid criticism of everything new. On the contrary, all his thoughts and actions were aimed at the progressive development of Russia, at liberation from what hinders it. He noted that only time would be the judge in Russia's transition to a "new" civilization. The truth, proven over the centuries, says that Russia can and must live in the bosom of the civilized world, enjoy its fruits, while remembering its ancestry, relying on the solid foundation of the identity of the people, in which conscience and justice, as it were, genetically go ahead of law.

Realizing that the market economy has no worthy alternative, Alexander Yakovlevich concentrated the efforts of the research institute staff on the search, justification and legislative support for reasonable methods of reform, focusing on the causes of the legal crisis, abuses and other negative phenomena. At the top of his voice, he drew attention to the destruction of the core foundation of the rule of law - the rule of law and its replacement with alien ideas of the self-regulating potential of the market. AND I. Sukharev organized comprehensive, in monitoring mode, studies of the state of legality in the country, based on their results, information and analytical reports were prepared under his leadership, which were sent to the country's leadership, federal and regional authorities, were actively used in the formation of legal policy, work to improve legislation and law enforcement practices.

The sensible forces had to work incredibly hard to slow down the destructive process of the criminalization of society, to turn the course of reforms in a favorable direction. And this was the merit of the employees of the research institute and, of course, Alexander Yakovlevich. In many of his works, he invariably emphasized the role of the state, the importance of a balanced, prudent policy, due to the dynamics and inconsistency of the transformation processes, which, by the way, is confirmed by world practice, for example, China.

In the most difficult for Russia 90s. 20th century Alexander Yakovlevich did a lot to substantiate and attract the attention of government agencies, the scientific community to the need to develop and implement a well-thought-out concept for combating crime, organizing scientific research on this issue. He has a broad view of the causes of illegal phenomena and measures to neutralize them. In his doctoral thesis "The Phenomenon of Russian Crime in the Transitional Period: Trends, Ways and Means of Counteraction", successfully defended in 1996, Alexander Yakovlevich, in relation to Russia, substantiated the harmfulness of the conventional theory of liberals, dooming to passive contemplation of crime with the worst expectations, supposedly natural and necessary in the conditions of movement towards democracy. The studies conducted under his leadership are distinguished by their scale, scientific validity, and contain predicted conclusions, taking into account the laws of social development.

In this regard, I will name the draft Fundamentals of the State Policy for Combating Crime in Russia prepared under his leadership and with direct participation (in co-authorship with professors A.I. Alekseev and M.P. Zhuravlev, 1997). Such or similar document, so necessary for society, as it was not, and is not. The project contained characteristics of the growing crime, its causal complex, economic, social and other determinants. Just what the state and its bodies should fight against. The Fundamentals, agreed with all interested departments, passed the approval procedures up to the Security Council of the Russian Federation, but were not approved by the President of the Russian Federation. However, the work was not in vain. Many ideas of the project entered into active scientific circulation and were subsequently accepted by the legislator and law enforcement practice. During this period A.Ya. Sukharev also published other works on this topic, some of which are included in this collection.

AND I. Sukharev is a bright public defender of the prosecutor's office against attacks that affect the foundations of its existence. At the same time, he does not idealize its activities, shows shortcomings, but looks to the future with the “eye of the sovereign”. For many years, Alexander Yakovlevich consistently and convincingly spoke in the press, at international and domestic scientific forums, from the rostrum of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR and the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, substantiating the role and place of Peter's brainchild in the changing system of state institutions in the country. A master of the spoken and written word, he, using documentary evidence and his rich erudition, citing compelling arguments, argued that a strong prosecutor's office is necessary for the state, it will serve its people faithfully and truthfully. Enemies declared that the prosecutor's office was a brake on the way to a brighter future, a vestige of a totalitarian system. They even submitted a bill to the State Duma with the "circumcision" of general supervision. In addition to ill-wishers in political and economic circles, there were enemies in the scientific community, who hung various derogatory labels on the prosecutor's office. Therefore, A.Ya. Sukharev and scientists from the Research Institute, having shown an example of scientific and human integrity, rebuffed opponents and prepared a number of works on issues of legality and the activities of the prosecutor's office. A concept for the development of the prosecutor's office for the transitional period was developed, which received the approval and support of specialists.

I cannot fail to note that on the initiative of A.Ya. Sukharev, his institute colleagues, in 1997 in Moscow, the leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation organized a multilateral meeting of experts from the Council of Europe on the place and role of the Russian prosecutor's office in the law enforcement system. This meeting was attended by prominent domestic lawyers, heads of federal and regional law enforcement and judicial agencies and a commission of recognized experts from European countries. Russia was represented by Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yu.I. Skuratov, his first deputy Yu.Ya. Chaika, A.Ya. Sukharev and I as the prosecutor of Moscow. The discussions were heated, but fruitful, and the substantive preponderance was ours. From the final document prepared by the experts of the Council of Europe, it followed that the experts positively assessed the role of our prosecutor's office in the justice system, in ensuring the rights and freedoms of the individual.

I believe that the reader will also be interested in two relevant works by A.Ya. Sukharev: "The Historical Fate of the Russian Prosecutor's Office" (2000) and "The State's Eye under Siege" (2001), in which he conducts discussions thoroughly, without excessive polemical passion and political engagement, showing the vector of movement, optimization of creative possibilities the reformed prosecutor's office as a single, multidisciplinary and centralized supervisory mechanism.

My fate turned out so that in January 2000 I was appointed director of the research institute, and A.Ya. Sukharev became the first deputy. He approved such a sharp turn even before my appointment, and then gave me full support in the new position. Exactly three years we worked together before I was promoted to the rank of Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia. And once again I was convinced of the remarkable personal and business qualities of Alexander Yakovlevich.

Scientific activity with an emphasis on the demands and needs of practice in the research institutes then seethed. A lot of interesting works were prepared and published, which were highly appreciated by prosecutors. Each of them was invested with A.Ya. Sukharev work. In the absence of the opportunity to tell about all of them, I will name one, jointly prepared with him and Professor A.I. Alekseev monograph "Criminological prevention: theory, experience, problems". This is a kind of educational and cognitive course, which, on the basis of historical analysis, presents a holistic, systematic view of the main component of combating crime - criminological prevention, destroyed in the post-Soviet era and gradually recreated in recent years. Capital labor, as it is sometimes called in the specialized literature. In memory of our comrade, the famous scientist, Deputy Director of the Research Institute Anatoly Ivanovich Alekseev, who did a lot to establish the authority of the team, which would have turned 80 on August 6, 2017, this collection includes a wonderful article by A.Ya. Sukharev "A word about a scientist, a lawyer-encyclopedist". Alexander Yakovlevich is certainly the standard of Russian patriotism. He splashes with the patriotic ideas of a sovereign, and then makes incredible efforts to put them into practice. AND I. Sukharev is a fighter against philistine indifference to the fate of the country. A significant page in his life is the patriotic, veteran and military movement, which produces the connection of all generations of Russians, especially young people. He puts his whole self into this movement and involves in it a wide range of people who are not indifferent to our history.

For more than 20 years, Alexander Yakovlevich has been the head of the Interregional Public Organization "Outstanding Commanders and Naval Commanders of the Fatherland", which, through its activities, reminds us to whom we owe our lives, who led the Red Army in its fateful battle against the invaders of unprecedented strength. Patriotic events of this organization are very important. These are commemorative events in honor of the Moscow and Stalingrad battles, the Battle of Kursk, the Siege of Leningrad and, of course, our big holiday - Victory Day. AND I. Sukharev was the main ideologist and organizer of international conferences in Moscow dedicated to the 55th anniversary of

and the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, as well as the 60th anniversary of the Tokyo-Khabarovsk Tribunal, which condemned the obscurantism of fascism and Japanese militarism. Using his international authority, he attracted representatives of the veteran, scientific, confessional, legal community, diplomats, political and military figures from different countries to participate in these forums. And the whole world heard the voices of these forums. Based on their results, under the leadership of Alexander Yakovlevich, the books “Lessons of Nuremberg and Problems of International Legality”, “Without a Statute of Limitation”, “The Last Point of the Second World War” were published.

Alexander Yakovlevich is implementing a great educational work, collecting materials and publishing books with his like-minded people about the outstanding military leaders K.K. Rokossovsky, V.I. Zakharov, N.G. Kuznetsov, I.D. Chernyakhovsky, F.I. Tolbukhin. These are works about the truth of war and a call to the vigilance of all who care about peace. In these literary and historical works, unknown facts from the heroism of the war years are given.

A strong impression is made by Alexander Yakovlevich’s deep in content and multi-page form interview, published in a recently published book by a well-known journalist, in which a military officer, who felt and survived the suffering of the war, tells about the life of commanders, people from the people, about their military art, achievements and victories , failures and defeats. Each of them has his own face and his own destiny, but the common need was to survive and defeat the enemy. AND I. Sukharev admires the courage of outstanding military leaders, their selflessness, concern for the rank and file of the war, and at the same time rebuffs the traitors to its history. He lives under the weight of concern for the fate of the country,

but believes in the immortality of the people, its future. And he is doing everything possible to, as he emphasizes, "to revive the fire of Soviet patriotism that has been fading over the years and charge the younger generation with pride in our victorious heritage."

Alexander Yakovlevich speaks among students, cadet corps, among scientific, creative, prosecutorial and investigative workers. Many people from his mouth are beginning to truly understand what love for the Motherland is, which has saved our country more than once in difficult times. He restores the truth about the war, without embellishing anything, but not denigrating either,

which has become commonplace in recent decades. His activity is to counter the lies and disinformation spread by falsifiers of history, to the malicious belittling of the role of the USSR in the Great Victory. Indignation, strong emotions arouse in Alexander Yakovlevich the situation in Ukraine, where, as he notes in his autobiographical book, “its rulers, like weather vanes, switched over to a hostile anti-Russian policy and committed “de-communization” with the pogrom of church shrines and historical monuments, started military adventures in Donbass and in the south-east of Ukraine, relying on Bandera militants and neo-Nazis.” This is the cry of the soul of an internationalist, which complements the portrait of our veteran hero. Health to you, dear Alexander Yakovlevich!

In conclusion, I note that the collection prepared by the Academy of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation is of great scientific and educational value both for future lawyers - current students, and for scientists and practitioners in their further professional development.

S.I. Gerasimov,

Doctor of Law,

Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation,

Honored Worker of the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation,

state counselor of justice 1st class

Born October 11, 1923. in with. Malaya Treshchevka, Zemyansky district, Voronezh region. He studied at school, a fifteen-year-old teenager began his career as a mechanic at the Voronezh aircraft factories, continued to study at night school.

In July 1941, he was drafted into the Red Army, graduated from an accelerated course at the Voronezh Military School of Communications, was baptized by fire as the commander of a communications platoon of the 237th Infantry Regiment of the 69th Infantry Division in March 1942 on the Western Front near Yukhnov. Then he fought on various fronts as deputy commander of a communications company, chief of communications of the regiment, regimental headquarters, participated in the Battle of Kursk, crossing the Dnieper, Operation Bagration to liberate Belarus and others. On September 10, 1944, while crossing the Narew River in Poland, he was seriously wounded in battle. Finished the war on the Vistula.

Demobilized in January 1946, he worked as an educator in the dormitory of the railway construction site.

In 1947-1959 he worked in responsible positions in the offices of the Zheleznodorozhny district committee of the Komsomol in Voronezh, the Voronezh regional committee of the Komsomol and the Central Committee of the Komsomol, in 1959-1970 - in the Administration of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1950 he graduated from the All-Union Law Correspondence Institute.

In 1970-1988 he was First Deputy Minister of Justice of the USSR, then Minister of Justice of the RSFSR.

In February 1988, he was appointed First Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR, and already in May of this year - Prosecutor General of the USSR.

In 1991-2006, he worked as Deputy, First Deputy Director of Science, Director of the Research Institute for the Problems of Strengthening Law and Order at the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation - Head of the Methodological Support Department of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

He is a State Counselor of Justice, Honored Lawyer of the RSFSR, Honored Worker of the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, Honorary Worker of the Prosecutor's Office, Doctor of Law, Professor.

For military valor and labor merits, he was awarded the Orders of the Red Banner, Patriotic War I degree (two), Patriotic War II degree, Red Star, October Revolution, Red Banner of Labor (two), "Badge of Honor", Friendship of Peoples, "For Merit to the Fatherland » IV degree, many medals, including "Veteran of the Prosecutor's Office"; badges "For impeccable service", "For fidelity to the law" of the 1st degree, Certificate of Honor of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.

From trench signalman to regimental staff officer

The battle near Moscow, the Kursk fire arc, the Dnieper battle and the Narevsky bridgehead near Warsaw - all these are unforgettable milestones in my military biography. And if the years erase the details of the memory of the war, then 65 years, day after day, torn scars and seams on my body, riddled with shells, remind me of them.

A lot has been said about the war, both truth and shameless lies. I will also share my truth about the price of the Victory, for which the Soviet people paid 27 million lives. Here they are, millions of Soviet people lying in the ground - the true heroes of the Great Patriotic War.

In mid-December 1941, I, a young lieutenant from Samarkand, where our Voronezh Military Communications School was evacuated, was sent to the suburbs of Tashkent, where the 69th Rifle Division was being formed at that time. There he was appointed commander of a communications platoon of the 237th Infantry Regiment. Everyone was in high spirits - just that, on the night of December 13, a message from the Soviet Information Bureau was heard on the radio about the failure of the German plan to encircle and capture Moscow. Finally, after a long retreat and heavy defeats, the Soviet troops dealt a crushing blow to the enemy, drove him back from Moscow and continued the offensive, freeing more and more new areas and settlements.

The front was waiting for reinforcements, so the formation of new units and formations proceeded at an accelerated pace. This fully applied to our division, the commander of which was the brigade commander Mikhail Andreevich Bogdanov. Our rifle regiment was headed by Major Ivan Savelyevich Prutsakov, the battalion commissar Vladimir Ivanovich Sekavin became the military commissar.

I had almost nothing to do with divisional signalmen. I had enough trouble with my platoon, the personnel of which, as well as the entire formation, was a real international. Not only were some of the soldiers to me, a beardless eighteen-year-old lieutenant, as they say, fit for fathers, but a significant part of the soldiers were called up from deaf Kazakh and Uzbek villages and auls, did not know the Russian language and were illiterate. But communication is a delicate matter, it requires technical knowledge, ingenuity and initiative, developed individual thinking and the ability to interact.

Signalers, and even sappers, are people who, in addition to the whole burden of infantry service (“Infantry! 100 miles passed - still hunting!”) Must perform their own, very specific functions, on which the overall outcome of the battle and the lives of hundreds and thousands of people often depend , because communication is the eyes and ears of the command, it is the nervous system of war, through which reports and orders go towards each other, and without which it is impossible to make decisions or carry out plans and actions. Therefore, I had to sweat, teaching my subordinates, where sometimes an interpreter was required. But after a while, they nevertheless learned mutual understanding, and the fighters mastered the basic skills.

The sun of Uzbekistan warmed us for a short time. In February 1942, the soldiers took the oath, received winter uniforms and moved to the front in echelons. True, our unit was not immediately sent to the front line. Arriving in Tula, on the steadfastness of the defenders of which all the offensive efforts of Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army had recently been shattered, the division learned how to fight, received equipment and weapons, until it set off again in March. On foot and on wheels, through Aleksin and Kaluga, past the vehicles abandoned by the Nazis during a hasty retreat, wrecked guns and burnt tanks, our unit arrived on the scorched earth of the Smolensk region. The division became part of General Boldin's 50th Army, which fought the Germans on the Western Front.

The baptism of fire of the division was to be taken on the site, where a very difficult situation had developed. After the liberation of Kaluga, the 50th Army advanced on Yukhnov in order to release the troops of the 33rd Army and the operational group of General Belov, who broke through to Vyazma, but as a result of an unexpected German counterattack, they were cut off from the main forces of the front. In the course of fierce fighting, in early March, our troops managed to cut off the Yukhnov ledge and liberate the city of Yukhnov. However, it was not possible to connect with units of the 33rd Army. On March 20, the Headquarters again ordered the restoration of communications between the troops fighting behind enemy lines. The 50th Army was replenished with four rifle divisions, including ours. The army received the task of capturing the Warsaw highway - the main supply artery of the German Army Group Center. Before the start of the offensive, there was still some time for study. But an order was received to advance our division to the left flank of the Army to cover the junction with the troops of the neighboring Bryansk Front. The offensive in the conditions of spring thaw, melting snow and opening of rivers seemed unrealistic, and was soon stopped.

Melted snow, sticky mud and icy water - these are the basic elements of which the world consisted at that time. And in this cold, squelching slurry, when there was nowhere to warm up or dry off, the Germans burned all the surrounding settlements, we had to dig in, prepare a defensive line. We were cut off from our own rear, food and ammunition were delivered by hand for 20 kilometers. Sometimes it got to the point that bread and cartridges were dropped to us at night from aircraft, as if we were paratroopers or partisans somewhere deep behind enemy lines, and did not occupy positions just 200 kilometers from Moscow.

Only by mid-May did the situation more or less improve, in connection with which hostilities also intensified. Units of our regiment undertook reconnaissance in combat in the direction of the village of Loshchihino, destroyed several bunkers, blew up an ammunition depot, broke into the village, threw grenades at the enemy communications center and cut telephone wires. There were no losses, so the division commander ordered the resumption of combat training. In turn, one regiment was withdrawn to the second echelon, and in the other two battalions were on combat duty. Prepared snipers, tank destroyers, mortars, machine gunners. My radio operators, telephonists and light signalers also improved their skills.

Local battles continued in our sector. Either we, or the Germans, for the sake of tactically improving our positions, from time to time launched attacks, accompanied by artillery preparation and air raids. Explosions roared, machine-gun bursts crackled, the dead fell, but the front line remained practically in the same place - this is the reality of positional defense. In June 1942, an order came to appoint Lieutenant Sukharev as deputy commander of a communications company.

Meanwhile, events were unfolding in the south that were decisive for the course of the war. Having suffered a defeat near Moscow, the Nazis conceived a new strategic offensive, the purpose of which was to seize Donetsk coal and Caucasian oil. The first goal of this plan was to capture Voronezh, after which the Germans were going to move on to Stalingrad and the Caucasus. They partially succeeded, but our troops defended the Voronezh left bank, disrupting the timing of the Nazi strategic offensive, and confusing the enemy's cards.

Based on the meager information reports, I understood that the city where I worked and studied turned into an arena of fierce battles, and my small homeland was captured by the enemy. Worried about the fate of relatives and friends.

In order to pin down the opposing enemy and prevent the enemy command from transferring new forces to the Volga and the Caucasus, the troops conducted active reconnaissance operations. The battalions of the regiment continued reconnaissance in force, participated in the battles for the dominant heights, which sometimes even had to be blown up with the help of tunnels. The Germans did not relax either. So, on October 7, the enemy opened heavy artillery and mortar fire on the entire defense sector of our division. This time, for the first time, we heard the grinding of six-barreled rocket launchers - the German answer to our Katyushas (at the front, these enemy installations were nicknamed "Ivans"). For an entire hour and a half, the Germans smashed and ironed our positions, firing at least 7 thousand shells and mines. As a result, many defenses were destroyed and communication lines were damaged. They urgently needed to be restored. The signalmen had to do this under the fire of the advancing enemy, who attacked the positions of all rifle regiments and wedged into our defenses. It was possible to restore the situation only with great difficulty, not immediately and not completely.

At the end of October, the divisional commander was called to the headquarters of the Army and ordered to prepare the division for defense on a wide front. In this regard, the battle formations were reorganized, new defensive positions were equipped, and if in the spring dugouts, trenches and trenches were dug in liquid mud, now they had to literally bite into the frozen ground petrified from early cold weather. But most importantly, it was necessary to repel the attacks of the enemy, to counterattack, to haunt him, to probe the enemy’s defenses in a new sector. I also had a chance to participate in one of these reconnaissance sorties.

The command demanded to get a “language” at any cost, and the company political instructor, Senior Lieutenant Mednikov, yesterday the head of the dog breeding department of the licensed enterprise, after lining up the unit, spoke long and tediously, urging him to break into the enemy trenches without sparing his life and, by all means, take and deliver the prisoner , preferably an officer. Having finished his fiery speech, he wished good luck in battle and, among other things, quickly asked if the fighters would have requests. Raising his hand up, a mighty Siberian in a sheepskin coat, Burundukov, one of my signalmen, spoke loudly. He said in an unhappy voice: “Comrade political instructor, I am ready to bring you any “language”, but feed me at least once to my full!” (Our rather meager diet was, of course, not enough for this reddish hero). The frail Mednikov immediately reacted: “Comrade Chipmunks, two steps forward! Rote - platoon disperse! After some ranting to the Siberian “buzoter”, a combat reconnaissance group was created, and I, together with my signalman Burundukov, had to provide communications. The midnight battle with the enemy turned out to be fleeting. Having approached the front line of the enemy, the fighters broke into the enemy dugout. One of the first to rush was the giant Siberian Chipmunkov. When, moments later, I was also in the dugout, I saw that Burundukov, pierced by machine gun fire, was lying flat on the ground, with a heavy telephone coil clutched in his right hand, and a German was lying next to him with a crushed head. It was not possible to take a live prisoner and, in a hurry, having captured the documents of the enemy, our wounded and the killed Burundukov, we returned to the location of the unit.

These episodes, often, consisted of our combat everyday life: successes and failures, joys and sufferings, funny and terrible. What didn’t work out for us at that time, it worked out for others. But we can safely say that we carried out our task - to tie down parts of the enemy, not to give him the opportunity to remove them from the Western Front and transfer them to Stalingrad, where the fate of the war was being decided at that time, we carried out with honor.

True, the higher authorities had their own opinion on this, and for some reason, rather because of the military failures of January - March 1943, the entire command of the 69th Infantry Division was shifted: a youthful Colonel Ivan Alexandrovich Kuzovkov was sent to replace the commander of Bogdanov, previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army. They replaced and executed not only the divisional commander, but also the division commissar V.G. Crane. The time was desperate and harsh, not tolerating any indulgences and oversights. Together with the soldiers' "slivers" they also flogged the command cadres.

On February 14, 1943, our division entered the disposal of the Don Front, which was renamed the Central Front exactly the next day, which was headed by the hero of Stalingrad Rokossovsky. The winter strategic offensive of the Soviet troops continued. A particularly intense struggle unfolded for the Kursk-Orlovsky bridgehead. Our division was attached to reinforce the 65th Army, whose concentration area was assigned to Livny.

Arrived there only in the 20th of February. The troops moved along the only auto-drawn road through an endless snowstorm and huge snowdrifts, sometimes waist-deep in snow. Heavy machine guns, mortars and ammunition were carried, artillery and vehicles lagged behind. We already had few vehicles, almost half of the horses required by the state were missing. The division was only 70 percent complete, lacking machine guns and a third of other automatic weapons, but the front could not wait, and we went to the front line with what we had.

The transition was the hardest. What does it mean in a blizzard and a 40-degree frost, carrying heavy equipment and weapons on your shoulders, to overcome thirty to forty kilometers a day! I literally had to sleep on the go. I remember how in one of the passages I dozed off so deeply that when the column turned to the left, by inertia I continued to move straight and woke up only after receiving a strong blow in the lower jaw of a sleigh cart moving towards me. Overturned by this blow to the ground, he jumped up terribly angry and even drew a pistol to further intimidate the rider. But he turned out to be not timid and reacted to my anger with a blow of a belt whip, after which he accelerated and disappeared from sight. Such forms of front-line communication were often encountered - there was no time for courtesies and secular etiquette. This helped me to get out of the drowsy state that had already become chronic, and the laughing nurse, whom I told about my misfortune, helped with her lotions to remove the tumor from the swollen and blue face of the young lieutenant.

Finally, the long-awaited halt. I hear the command: "Disperse for the night!". We spend the night in the newly liberated village of Komarichi near the town of Sevsk, whose name six months later our 69th rifle division will receive. Together with my signalmen and the foreman of the company, I find myself in a modest but hospitable hut, despite all the ruin that the expelled invaders left behind. We regale the hosts with stone-hard biscuits and a jar of stew hidden just in case by the foreman, the hosts treat us with pickles, cabbage, jacket potatoes. We eat to our heart’s content, we haven’t tried village pickles for a long time. But at night, covered with thick "beds", that is, home-made woolen bedspreads, we cannot fall asleep because of rampant fleas and bedbugs. This new torment is relieved only by the command of the orderly, announcing an imminent collection. We are moving towards Sevsk. Again snowdrifts and endless raids by enemy aircraft, in which you have to scatter across the virgin snow, and each time dead and wounded comrades remain lying on the snow.

And so day after day, until the festive Day of the Soviet Army, which we did not have to celebrate this time. There was no time to celebrate, the next day the Central Front went on the offensive, so that the arriving troops were brought into battle from the march. The 69th Rifle Division covered the right flank of the army at the junction with the Bryansk Front. The vanguards thrown forward captured a number of settlements and defended them until the rest of the units approached, subjected to repeated bombing attacks by the German Junkers on the march. On the morning of February 26, we already had a wired connection with the army headquarters. The division commander received an order to develop an offensive against Dmitrov-Orlovsky. It was necessary to actively support the breakthrough of General Kryukov's cavalry rifle group, whose horsemen had just liberated Sevsk and advanced far to the west, reaching the Desna River.

The task turned out to be difficult. When our regiment entered the battle, only five or six kilometers remained to the city. Although we continued to attack for several weeks, we did not succeed in taking Dmitrov-Orlovsky. The enemy, with the support of aviation, artillery and tanks, continuously counterattacked, so that some of our battalions even got surrounded and had to fight their way to their own. The group of General Kryukov (a cavalry corps and two ski-shooting brigades) was also surrounded. Only with the help of deblocking strikes of the 2nd Panzer and our 65th armies, she managed to break out of the encirclement with heavy losses and retreat to the Sev River, where she entrenched herself. The heaviest fighting continued until the twentieth of March. For the bravery and courage shown in battles, the division was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

My military efforts also did not go unnoticed. At the end of March 1943, I was appointed, as they wrote then in the orders, "to a vacant position with a promotion" - the commander of a communications company of the regiment. Apparently, this to some extent turned my head (well, I now reported directly to the regiment commander) and prompted some initiatives, or rather, rash, reckless actions, one of which almost ended in a tribunal.

In the communications company, as in other parts, as already mentioned, people of different nationalities, the degree of combat and special training, and age categories served. And signalmen, as a rule, were distinguished by a more mature age. According to our company, one could judge the multinational composition, perhaps, of the entire active army. It included representatives of all 15 republics and major nationalities, but Uzbeks and Kazakhs prevailed, where the division was formed, as well as Ukrainians and Belarusians, where we were to fight.

And so, on one of the days of the offensive, I saw a strange picture. At the exit from the liberated village knee-deep in the snow stood a saluting line of fascists. Approaching, I saw that they were stiff and dead. This amazing panorama, at the same time comical and grotesquely ironic, caused me a surge of pride in Russian Terkin's humor, and I also decided to distinguish myself. At the night halt of the regiment, I came up with the idea to install a loudspeaker pipe close to the enemy trenches, with the help of which it would be possible to organize a daily propaganda impact on the enemy and persuade the Germans to voluntarily surrender.

He devoted only two signalmen to his plans - a technically educated Chizh, a 30-year-old sergeant from Western Ukraine, and a tall Russian telephone operator, who warmly approved the initiative and began to prepare equipment. By the beginning of a gloomy winter evening, dressed in camouflage suits and standing on skis loaded with equipment, we set off towards the intended goal. And although the terrain was swampy, but deep snow and frost, as well as a branchy forest, allowed us to effortlessly cross the neutral zone unnoticed. And then the experienced Chizh took the initiative. Taking advantage of the lull, broken only by rare rifle and machine-gun shots, he proposed to put up a campaign installation right under the noses of the Germans, and he himself volunteered to stretch the cable wire and fix the loudspeaker in a secluded place. And in order not to unmask the installation by walking, he asked us to stay in place with a cable reel to control and regulate the movement of the wire. Having agreed with the proposed option and feeling the smooth movement of the cable, we calmed down and began to expect the reaction of the enemy. Only after 15-20 minutes shots became more frequent, flares flew from both sides, but soon everything calmed down again.

The stoppage of the rotation of the cable reel and, especially, the cut end of the wire, which we easily pulled towards us, alerted me. Following the tracks laid by Chizh, he began to call the sergeant in a half-whisper, but all to no avail. There was also no technical installation on site. Returning to his friend, he began to think about what had happened. My attempt to speak more loudly to Chizh turned into a series of flashes of flares and a prolonged mortar attack. With a half-empty coil, we escaped from the forest edge and rushed in fear to the headquarters of the regiment. Pushing aside the half-asleep Komsomol organizer Captain Nikitin, he told about what had happened. Anticipating possible unpleasant consequences, he advised not to say anything to political officer Sekavin, but in the morning to report the whole truth to the regiment commander and SMERSH representative. It is difficult to convey my state, which I experienced during the two-day trial of this incident. And on the third day, we heard from the enemy, amplified, perhaps by the same loudspeaker, the treacherous voice of Chizh, calling on the soldiers and officers of our regiment to voluntarily surrender to German captivity. Thus, my idea with the “agitation pipe” was realized in a way that I could not imagine in a nightmare. But I was lucky that the commander of the regiment turned out to be the kind and fearless Gorbunov, the future Hero of the Soviet Union, who, like the Komsomol organizer, Nikitin, spoke in defense of the unlucky decomposer of enemy soldiers. The case ended with a severe scolding.

The reason for the first unsuccessful episode of my combat biography, I think, was boastful arrogance. It concerned not only individual young people, but I would say, the entire obsessed young generation. On the one hand, patriotic enthusiasm, the joy of the first victories, with which Senior Lieutenant Sukharev, who did not lose his Komsomol fervor, decided to convince the invaders located in the center of Russia to drop their weapons and flee to surrender; on the other hand, a cold-bloodedly deliberate, prepared betrayal. What is most surprising to me is that today there are people who are ready not only to caustically ironize about the selfless efforts of the Party and Komsomol in defense of the Motherland, but also to justify traitors like Sergeant Chizh.

A lot of truth has been said about the war, wonderful novels have been written and wonderful films have been made. The Fate of a Man by Mikhail Sholokhov and Hot Snow by Yuri Bondarev seem especially strong to me. However, today in the media there are many fictions and lies that humiliate the dignity and memory of the dead. War is an ordeal in every sense of the word, and it is not for nothing that one year at the front counts as three years of peaceful labor. The war seemed to me endlessly long and exhausting, but it tested me physically and tempered me spiritually, taught me the truth of life. And those combat episodes that have sunk into my memory are not valuable in themselves, but because they are a reflection of the reality of the entire Soviet era, concentrated in the years of war hard times, which no one ever has the right to forget.

I recall an episode from my front-line life, when my fantasy led to yet another "heroic" act. In those days and weeks, after endlessly sitting on the "active" defense, we finally launched an offensive. While at the headquarters of the regiment, he witnessed a telephone conversation between Lieutenant Colonel Gorbunov and the divisional authorities. The conversation went on raised tones. The higher command reproached the regiment commander for slow advance, marking time in front of a large settlement actually abandoned by the Germans. And Gorbunov, as best he could, justified himself, asking for reinforcements and artillery support. The bossy dressing down brought the good-natured lieutenant colonel into such irritation that he slammed his pipe on the table and cursed like a soldier. Seeing and hearing all this, I decided to somehow help my commander. The thought ripened, without telling anyone, to go along the road leading to the ill-fated village, get as close as possible and observe the situation. Through the binoculars, not only the smoking huts on the outskirts were clearly visible, but also another wide path (the settlement stood at a crossroads, which gave it strategic importance), along which the departing German units were slowly moving. Having carefully considered what was happening, I returned back and went to the first assistant of the regimental chief of staff, captain Surzhikov, to tell me about the unpleasant conversation I had heard between Gorbunov and the division commander and about the German retreat from the village we had just seen, which we were going to storm in the morning. The captain, who was inclined to admit that the divisional commander was right, accepted the information with interest. He took out a topographic map from a tablet, and together we began to examine the intricate plan of the village, which stood at the crossroads of dirt and highway roads. “Yes, a tempting knot, it would be necessary to scout it before the upcoming battle,” Surzhikov concluded. Agreeing, I asked him, what prevents us from finding out in advance the intentions of the enemy? Moreover, judging by what they saw through binoculars, they seem to be set to retreat. Having caught fire with the idea of ​​getting ahead of the neighboring regiments, the captain readily responded to the offer in the late afternoon to go with a group of scouts to the village, reconnoiter the situation and report this to the frustrated regimental commander.

Without telling anyone about the planned action, we formed a group of six soldiers who turned up and with the onset of darkness in camouflage suits moved towards the village. On the way, they caught up with four more armed Uzbek soldiers moving in the same direction in order to try their luck in getting something to eat. Having broken up in pairs, looking around, they came close to the extreme houses of the village. Separate huts, set on fire with all German pedantry in a strictly staggered manner, blazed with bright flames, illuminating the wide street. This radiance made it difficult to see the surviving houses and the firing points of camouflaged embrasures equipped under them. I led the group on the left, and Surzhikov decided to go with the rest of the soldiers on the right side. But I, like a magnet, was drawn to the houses themselves, which showed no signs of life. With extreme caution, looking back at the soldiers walking behind him, he crept close to the house. Intuition did not deceive - in a moment a wide embrasure of the bunker appeared, but at the same moment I ran into a huge German, dozing in the warmth that spread in waves from burning buildings. Fritz was frightened by surprise and furiously yelled into the darkness, but quickly came to his senses, grabbed the machine gun and, numb, hesitated. I pulled out a pistol with a trembling hand, fired, missed and, without waiting for a response from a machine gun, rushed to my heels along the illuminated section of the road, along which a German ran after me, firing on the move. Having passed the last surviving house, he looked back and, against a white snowy background, saw a black figure moving away towards the other side of the village. Perhaps the unlucky fascist was not so much chasing me as running to his "cold" point on the highway, which he left without permission to warm himself. Meanwhile, in the village, where the fire was still blazing, rockets took off and rifle shots thundered, bursts from machine guns and machine guns crackled, the fiery dotted lines of tracer bullets darted from side to side.

Out of breath, he ran to the headquarters and reported to the regiment commander about the generally favorable situation that had developed, referring to the expected withdrawal of the enemy. He listened with interest to the report and asked: "Where is Surzhikov?" I spoke honestly about our mutual initiative and expressed my conviction that he would soon return. Then the resolute Gorbunov, having asked again about the location of the Germans and received an encouraging answer, immediately called the commander of the first battalion, located on the edge of the forest not far from the headquarters of the regiment, ordered to meet with me and immediately put forward an assault reconnaissance group in order to once again probe the enemy before the decisive one scheduled for the early morning fight for the village.

Inspired by the order of the regimental commander, he immediately rushed to the battalion, helped the battalion commander in recruiting the group and providing it with communications, so that soon our “pre-dawn” landing force moved to the village. Approaching the first surviving house by about 200 meters, we suddenly found ourselves under heavy enemy fire. Apparently, the Germans were alarmed by our night march and warily awaited further actions. The first wounded appeared. The battalion commander contacted the regiment commander and received an order to dig in. The battle turned out to be serious, and only in the evening, with the forces of not a reconnaissance group and not a battalion, but the entire regiment with reinforcements, we managed to capture the stronghold of the enemy’s defense with considerable losses. When we entered the village, the few inhabitants who remained there confirmed our reconnaissance forecasts. It turned out that the Germans were really preparing to withdraw, but alarmed by the actions of the reconnaissance group, they fortified themselves at the opposite end of the village, pulled up their forces and put up fierce resistance. As a result, the regiment lost many soldiers. Captain Surzhikov with his group went missing - perhaps, while examining the right side of the burning village, he was ambushed and could have died. The only consolation was the liberation of the village, which was an important center of German defense, where we unexpectedly met with the same Uzbeks who had spent the whole battle day in the basement pickles of the first surviving house. That's who is lucky, so lucky - in the war, as I said, the tragic and the comic sometimes go hand in hand.

In an effort to take revenge for the defeats at Stalingrad, in the Don and the North Caucasus, to regain the strategic initiative and change the course of the war in their favor, the military command of Nazi Germany planned to conduct a major offensive operation in the summer of 1943, code-named "Citadel". The Kursk ledge was chosen as the place of the offensive. From here, Soviet troops could strike at the adjacent flanks of the Army Groups "Center" and "South" and break into the central regions of Belarus and Ukraine. But, on the other hand, the German troops here also hung over the flanks of the Central and Voronezh fronts. They had a convenient opportunity for bilateral coverage of the Soviet grouping from the further development of the offensive to the south or northeast. The Nazi command had high hopes for the new heavy tanks "Tiger" and "Panther" and assault guns "Ferdinand". In turn, the Soviet command, having unraveled the enemy’s plan, decided to wear him out in a defensive operation, and then go on a counteroffensive in order to liberate the Donbass and the entire Left-Bank Ukraine. The task of the Central Front was to defend the northern part of the Kursk ledge, repel the enemy offensive, bleed his troops, and then defeat the German grouping in the Orel region.

On July 5, 1943, the shock groups of the Nazi troops went on the offensive. The main blow of the enemy in the zone of the Central Front fell on the troops of the 13th Army. In the zone of the 65th Army, the enemy delivered a distracting blow to the positions of the 18th Rifle Corps, namely the 149th and our 69th Rifle Divisions. Met by heavy fire, the Nazis lay down and soon withdrew, but in the evening of the same day they subjected our defenses to heavy artillery and mortar fire. Over the next few days, the Germans repeatedly attacked the positions of the division, but were repulsed and suffered heavy losses. By July 10, the troops of the Central Front repelled the enemy offensive and forced him to abandon attempts to break through to Kursk from the north. On the same day, the commander of the 65th Army, General Pavel Ivanovich Batov, came to us, who presented the division with the Order of the Red Banner. Now our 69th Rifle Division was twice Red Banner. At the solemn formation, Colonel Kuzovkov, minting words, assured the commander on behalf of the entire personnel that the division would fulfill any combat mission and make every effort to defeat the enemy as soon as possible. Very soon these words had to be confirmed by deeds and, I think, we fulfilled our promise

On July 15, the troops of the Central Front went over from defense to the offensive with the task of breaking through to Orel. The 65th Army, with the forces of the 18th Rifle Corps, fought for Dmitrovsk-Orlovsky, where the highway passed, along which the enemy threw his reserves under Orel. The places were familiar to us - as recently as March, we went on the attack week after week, without taking the city. But now everything was different. On August 7, the corps broke through the enemy defenses, and already on August 12, Dmitrovsk-Orlovsky was liberated from the invaders. A few days later, our division, having stopped pursuing the retreating enemy, was transferred to the Sevsk region, where, again, we had already fought in the spring, but did not achieve much success. Parts took up positions two kilometers from the city on August 17. On the same day, by order of the division, I was appointed assistant chief of staff of the regiment for communications instead of Captain Mogilevtsev, who had retired due to injury. The title of the post was soon shortened to "chief of communications of the regiment", which, of course, added pride to the 20-year-old captain Sukharev.

However, the newly minted officer of the regimental headquarters had no time to rest on his laurels. The Nazis turned Sevsk into a powerful center of resistance. All the hills on which the city stands were heavily fortified strongholds, interconnected by a single system of fire. The path to them was blocked by the Sev River and its swampy floodplain, which was shot from all sides by enemy artillery and machine-gun fire, from whose observation posts, equipped on the bell towers of numerous city churches, all our positions were in full view. To storm the city in the forehead meant to suffer heavy losses and did not guarantee success, so the commander decided to bypass Sevsk from the north with the forces of the 18th Rifle Corps. The corps commander, General Ivanov, ordered the main attack by the forces of the 37th Guards and 246th Rifle Divisions, and our division had to overcome the wide, heavily swampy floodplain of the Sev River, crossed by numerous channels and channels, and capture the settlements of Streletskaya Sloboda and Novoyamskoye, covering the strike group corps from a possible enemy counterattack.

Our divisional commander, together with divisional specialists, developed a plan to overcome the "valley of death", as the floodplain was called in the division three kilometers wide. The idea was to overcome the floodplain during a 45-minute artillery preparation under the cover of a smoke screen, then force the Sev River itself, shoot down the enemy and break into Streletskaya Sloboda. It is clear that such an operation required the most thorough preparation, which took no less than ten days, or rather, days, since the work was carried out day and night under fire. At eight o'clock in the morning on August 26, guns and mortars opened heavy fire on the enemy's defenses. With the first salvo, the division's units rushed forward. The offensive impulse of the 237th Infantry Regiment was so high that we slipped through the floodplain in just half an hour, even before the end of the artillery preparation, and on a signal we began to ford the North. The Germans, who came to their senses, met us with mortar and machine-gun fire, but soon they were again pressed to the ground by attack aircraft that appeared in the sky. Two hours later, our fighters were already fighting on the streets of Streletskaya Sloboda, and by the end of the day, Novoyamskoye was also occupied. Other parts of the Army were introduced into the corridor pierced by the division, and on the evening of August 27, a red banner was hoisted over Sevsk. The Germans committed strong reserves to the battle and during the following days they constantly counterattacked our positions, but without success. They failed to capture Sevsk for the third time.

On August 31, 1943, a joyful message for us was transmitted on the radio: by order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the 69th Rifle Division was awarded the honorary title of Sevskaya for breaking through the heavily fortified enemy defense line in the Sevsk region, and all the soldiers and commanders were thanked for excellent military operations. In the evening of the same day, the sky of the capital was lit up with colorful fireworks of solemn salute. And on September 17, exactly a month after my appointment as the regiment's communications chief, by order of the Army, Captain Sukharev was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree. In order not to verbosely describe for what deeds I was awarded this high award, I will quote the award sheet signed by Lieutenant Colonel Gorbunov: “During military operations on 26.8.43 - 29.8.43 under vil. Streletskaya and Novoyamskoye, Sevsky district, Oryol region perfectly organized the smooth operation of all types of communication. All the time he was on the front line and personally supervised the establishment of communications between units. Under heavy enemy fire, he inspired the fighters to quickly correct her impulses on the line .... As a result of well-established communication, uninterrupted control of the battle was ensured. One way or another, I was proud of both my first order and my contribution to the common victory.

Meanwhile, the 65th Army was developing the offensive, driving the Germans to the Dnieper where the lands of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met. Residents of the liberated villages and towns joyfully greeted the troops of the Red Army, invited them to their homes, and spoke about the horrors of the fascist occupation. The following fact speaks of what kind of enemy they had to fight with: when the battalions of the 237th Infantry Regiment cleared the village of Sobich from the Germans, the garrison of which was armed with mortars, artillery, tanks and armored vehicles, as the locals said, the retreating Nazis wasted no time in order to bury or take away their dead, they threw their corpses into burning buildings. However, neither desperate anger, nor powerful weapons, nor impregnable fortifications of the Nazis could hold back the offensive onslaught of Soviet soldiers. On September 12, units of our division crossed the Desna and captured a bridgehead on the western bank of the river. For several days there were fierce battles with a fiercely counterattacking enemy, whose infantry was supported by powerful Ferdinands, but this did not save the Germans. Their resistance was eventually broken. On September 16, in Moscow, in honor of the troops that successfully crossed the Desna, a solemn salute was fired, and the 69th Rifle Division, twice Red Banner Sevskaya, was again mentioned among the distinguished formations.

Ahead was the "Eastern Wall" - the strategic line of defense of the Nazi troops, which they began to create in the spring of 1943, and after the defeat on the Kursk Bulge they equipped it with increased intensity. The most important links in the enemy's defense were the rivers Sozh, Dnieper and Molochnaya, and Batov's army units were moving towards Sozh. The retreating enemy clung to every settlement, and the conditions of the terrain - dense forests and vast swamps - prevented the use of tanks and heavy artillery by our troops, so that the main burden of the fighting fell on the shoulders of the rifle troops. And yet, by the end of September, parts of our division reached the Sozh River and on the night of September 29 began to cross it. At first, only one battalion of the regiment managed to cling to the opposite bank. The enemy brought down an avalanche of fire on a small bridgehead, one attack followed another, but ours held out, no matter what. On October 1, the chief of staff of the regiment, Captain Prozorov, died here. Less than a month and a half I had the opportunity to serve as his assistant. Having crossed over with the battalion, he transmitted data on the situation to the division headquarters by radio when he was shot at point-blank range by German submachine gunners who had broken through. By the end of the day, only ten fighters remained alive on the bridgehead. Finally, help came, Sozh was crossed by other units of the regiment. And this time the Nazis could not prevent the crossing. The next day, writers Konstantin Simonov and Ilya Ehrenburg, who arrived at the division, met with the heroes of the bridgehead. After talking with distinguished fighters and commanders, they promised to tell the country about the heroes of the Sevtsy.

And soon the seedlings were needed in another more difficult and hot section. By decision of the command of the Central Front, two corps of the 65th Army were regrouped to the south with the task of crossing the Dnieper in the zone of operations of the 61st Army, the troops of the left flank of which managed to overcome the water barrier, and on the right there was a hitch.

There are wonderful words of Gogol about how wonderful the Dnieper is in calm weather and that a rare bird will fly to its middle. So, the weather was inclement October and we had no wings, while the destination was not even the middle, but the right bank of the great river, turned by the invaders into an impregnable stronghold of their Eastern Wall. Our division had to cross the Dnieper in the area of ​​​​the town of Radul, where the width of the river reaches 400 meters, and a swampy meadow spreads in front of the river. On the high western coast (sandy slopes of 12-16 meters), the Germans equipped two lines of trenches connected by communications, numerous firing points shot every meter, settlements and individual buildings were adapted for long-term defense. The village of Schitsy, located at a steep height, was especially strongly fortified, which the divisions had to storm. There were no special landing craft. On the shore, with the help of local residents, they managed to collect about fifty old, half-rotten boats, on which machine guns were installed, while the soldiers of the assault groups were trained in rowing and driving in a nearby swamp.

On the morning of October 15, along with the beginning of artillery preparation, to the majestic sounds of Fradkin’s song “Oh, Dnipro, Dnipro ...”, poured from a powerful loudspeaker installed on the shore, and under the cover of a smoke screen, the landing battalions, together with their neighbors, began to move forward. When the Germans realized what was happening and opened heavy fire from all types of weapons, assault groups were already landing on the opposite bank. Having captured the bridgehead, the fighters repelled about 25 fierce counterattacks of the enemy during the day, thereby ensuring the crossing of the main forces of the division. The next day, rifle regiments began to break through the German defenses, capturing Shchitsy and a number of other settlements. Fierce battles continued for about a week, as a result, the captured bridgehead was significantly expanded, but the second line of German defense - the so-called "Nadvinsk positions", where the enemy pulled up to five divisions, could not be overcome. Nevertheless, the importance of breaking through the largest water barrier was so great that 50 soldiers and officers of the 69th Infantry Division were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for crossing the Dnieper. Fifty Heroes! The figure speaks for itself - this has never happened before in our military history. And it was not for nothing that the commander of the 65th Army, General Batov, in his memoirs, especially noted: “The Dnieper was the crown for the 69th. And earlier, starting from Sevsk, there was a stubborn ascent to this outstanding feat. At each turn, the division became better, more organized, more collected, forming in itself the qualities of the one going ahead.

And there was where to go: the occupiers still retained a considerable part of our Motherland, so the liberation of the Right-Bank Ukraine and Belarus, conceived by the Stavka, lay ahead. The very fact that on October 20, 1943 the Central Front was renamed the Belorussian Front (and the Voronezh, Stepnoy, South-Western and Southern, respectively, into the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian), spoke of the further direction of the upcoming offensive operations. And they did not keep themselves waiting long. At noon on November 10, the troops of the Belorussian Front launched a decisive offensive. Breaking the resistance of the enemy, units of the 69th Infantry Division moved forward. The fighters and commanders were inspired by the realization that less and less of their native land remained in the hands of the invader, but at the same time we also experienced the bitterness of loss. On November 15, in the village of Smogordino, the head of communications of the division, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Vasilyevich Kolomeytsev, a wonderful person and a great expert in his military specialty, died after being blown up by a mine. He has been with us since the formation of the rifle division in Tashkent and met an untimely death on the soil of Belarus. And on December 4, the heroes of the Dnieper were honored in the division. Army Commander General Batov, a member of the Military Council, General Radetsky, and commander of the 18th Rifle Corps, General Ivanov, arrived to present high awards. Among those who received the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union was the commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Gorbunov, who spoke in response. Major Iosif Iustinovich Sankovsky.

Immediately after the New Year of 1944, preparations began for the next offensive - the liberation of Polesye continued. On January 8, our division attacked the enemy's defenses between the villages with the characteristic Belarusian names Kozlovichi and Domanovichi, and a few days later broke the enemy's resistance. I remember these villages also by the fact that for them I received my second military award - the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree. For these battles, which ended with the liberation of the cities of Kalinkovichi and Mozyr, of course, they awarded not only me, but also many others. Moreover, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of January 15, 1944, the 69th Rifle Division was awarded the Order of Suvorov, 11th degree.

With battles and losses, we continued to push the enemy until mid-April, slowly moving forward through the swamps of Polesie flooded with hollow water. The spring of 1944 brought me back to the spring of 1942, when we made reconnaissance sorties into the camp of the enemy in the damp forests of the Moscow region and the Smolensk region. Here, in Belovezhsky woodland, there was perhaps no less slush and slush underfoot, but now we were not 200 kilometers from Moscow, but 100 kilometers from distant Bobruisk, and we were not defending, but advancing, freeing our land and our people . And this is not just a common turn of phrase.

Near the town of Ozarichi, units of our division discovered three German concentration camps, where thirty-three and a half thousand old people, women and children were kept (only children under the age of 13 were more than fifteen thousand), almost without exception infected with typhus. The camps, all the approaches to which the Nazis had mined, were an open area surrounded by barbed wire. There were no buildings, not even dugouts or huts, the guards shot everyone who tried to make a fire to warm themselves. Being in such inhuman conditions, hundreds of people died every day. For several days in a row, the services of our divisional rear washed, fed, and provided first aid to former prisoners. Thanks to the selfless work of military doctors, tens of thousands of lives were saved and the danger of a typhus epidemic among the civilian population and among the troops was averted.

This time, in active defense, the 65th Army stood on the southern sector of the Belarusian ledge, or "balcony", as the Nazi strategists called it. This ledge, deeply wedged into the location of the Soviet troops, served as the most important strategic foothold for the enemy, holding which the Germans covered the approaches to Poland and East Prussia and maintained a stable position in the Baltic states and Western Ukraine. Therefore, the Nazis tried to keep the "balcony" at any cost. The first line under the conditional name "Panther" was especially carefully equipped, where our positions were just opposite one of the sectors. The first defensive line consisted of two or three lines, and each of them included two or three continuous trenches connected by communication passages and covered with barbed wire, minefields and anti-tank ditches. The multi-trench second line of defense turned out to be no less durable. A lot of pillboxes, bunkers, armored caps, dugouts with an overlap of five or six rolls, reinforced with reinforced concrete slabs, were built. The infantry hid in deep underground cracks - "fox holes". The Germans turned large settlements into centers of resistance, and Vitebsk, Orsha, Bobruisk, Mogilev, Borisov and Minsk were declared fortified areas by Hitler's order.

The plan of the Soviet High Command for the liberation of Belarus received the code name "Bagration". It was decided to start the offensive simultaneously in several sectors in order to dismember and defeat the enemy troops in parts. Particular importance was attached to the elimination of the most powerful groups in the areas of Vitebsk and Bobruisk and the rapid advance to Minsk in order to encircle and eliminate the main forces of the German army "Center". The troops of the 1st Belorussian Front under the command of General Rokossovsky were supposed to attack, and Marshal Zhukov, Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief, coordinated his actions with the neighbors.

Zhukov and Rokossovsky, accompanied by commander Batov and commander Ivanov, arrived at the divisional NP on June 7, 1944 and studied the enemy’s defenses for a long time. The visit of such distinguished guests did not go unnoticed; it was clear to many that a major offensive was being prepared. This became quite obvious when, a day later, Batov and Ivanov again arrived at the division and over the next three days literally climbed the entire defense sector, visiting all the regiments and talking with the soldiers called up from these places and therefore knowing the secrets of the Polissya swamps. As the commander himself later recalled, “Before the offensive, our army stood in a zone completely covered with forests. Many small rivers with wide floodplains, canals and marshy swamps. The places are extremely difficult to maneuver. The fascist German command took advantage of these terrain features and created a strong, field-type defense in depth. However, there were also weaknesses in it, army intelligence and headquarters discovered them. The fact is that the enemy succumbed to the idea that the local swamps were impassable for troops, and placed the main forces in the Parichi region, where they were waiting for our strike. Of course, this direction was tempting. The area is dry and has no water barriers. But in the Parichi direction, a high rate of progress cannot be achieved. The dominant heights are with the enemy, the density of his firepower is great. To advance near Parichi would have meant heavy losses. Therefore, when choosing the direction of the main attack, the swamps on the left flank and in the center of the operational formation of the army, where the 18 Corps was located, increasingly attracted attention.

Advancing through the swamps, and even with heavy equipment, is an unprecedented thing, but this is what Russian ingenuity is for: special “wet shoes” were made to move through the swamps - something like wide skis woven from a vine. Many other special means and techniques were invented. Sappers also worked in our division, laying roads through the swamp at night, and all other units and services were actively preparing for the offensive.

The day before the general offensive, reconnaissance in force was carried out on a front of four and a half hundred kilometers. Its goal is to hide the directions of the main attacks and force the Germans to bring their main forces to the front line, inflicting maximum damage on them with artillery and aviation forces. Early in the morning of June 24, guns rumbled (more than 200 barrels per kilometer of the front), Katyushas and heavy mortars hit, and battalions went on the attack following the barrage of fire. Our regiment stormed the enemy defenses near the village of Radin and, despite the dagger fire of German machine guns, quickly broke through the front line and moved on. Already two days later, army units reached the Berezina, and by the morning of June 28, our division liberated the city of Osipovichi, the railway center through which the entire German 9th Army was supplied. Surrounded near Bobruisk, the 40,000-strong group of Nazis lost their last hope of outside help. There were 6 divisions in the Bobruisk cauldron - and these are the very Germans who managed to surround the Soviet troops so many times during the first two years of the war! But since then we have learned a lot, the highly experienced Rokossovsky and the young talented Chernyakhovsky (commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front) outplayed the Nazi generals and carried out a brilliant military operation.

According to its strategic concept, the Bobruisk operation has no analogues in the history of military art, primarily in terms of the filigree synchronism of the use of tank, air and artillery attacks in a wooded and swampy area and overcoming large water barriers. Its originality is associated with the psychological cunning of tank passages in places where the enemy, by virtue of simple logic, did not expect and could not wait for an offensive and encirclement. For the encirclement and destruction of the Bobruisk grouping of the enemy I.D. Chernyakhovsky became an army general, and K.K. Rokossovsky received a marshal's star. Many have received awards, including the author of these lines.

Separate rather large groups of Germans tried to break out of the encirclement along the highway to Minsk, which went through Osipovichi, but were defeated and captured. In connection with these events, I am reminded of one rather remarkable case. Early in the morning at the beginning of July, exhausted by field battles, I fell asleep like a dead man in a signal buggy in the hope of being guarded by submachine gunners. And at dawn he suddenly felt a gentle push on his shoulder, opened his eyes and, seeing an armed German in front of him, was almost dumbfounded. Jumping from his makeshift bed, he kicked my sleeping guard with his boot and yelled furiously, pouring burst after burst from the machine gun. The German instantly pulled away from me and ran away from the edge of the forest, where I saw a whole line in mouse-colored uniforms. Having mastered myself, together with my two submachine gunners, I ran up close to the Germans and, seeing them with weapons, ordered with gestures to put the machine guns in one place. Immediately, addressing the captives, he asked them in German: “Which of you are Social Democrats?” Almost all of them started shouting in chorus: “I, I!”. Then he ordered our automatic signalman, who was watching this scene, to bring a loudspeaker - a “campaign pipe” and, taking it in his hands, in a broken German-Russian dialect, he called on them to turn to their surrounded brethren with an appeal to reasonably assess the hopelessness of the situation and surrender. Repeated twice, six prisoners raised their hands. There were no more hunters, but this was enough, since we had only five sets of devices, so one device had to be given to two Germans for joint use.

Wishing success to the "voluntary" agitators, he looked at his watch - the arrow was approaching six in the morning, so that the front-line "working day" had already begun. The Germans who had surrendered stood up on command and, led by me and the submachine gunner, went to the nearby village, where the headquarters of the regiment had stopped yesterday. At the sight of the prisoners, no one was particularly surprised. Having reported to the deputy commander of the regiment about what had happened, he did not fail to inform him about the action with the agitation pipes. Thinking about it, he asked if I was sure of the safety of the equipment? This puzzled me, so I looked forward to the outcome, hoping for the best, but not excluding a catch. Time dragged on, as luck would have it, slowly, it was already past noon, and the “agitators” still did not appear. But at three o'clock in the afternoon a German swam out of the forest, who, without waiting for the order "Hyundai hoch!", He himself raised his hands in advance. Behind him appeared another one, another, and then the beaten Nazi warriors poured in whole crowds to surrender. My German “Social Democrats” returned with loudspeakers, though not all of them: they did not wait for those two who left with one propaganda tube. Maybe they changed their mind about surrendering, or maybe they ran into a bullet from some seasoned SS man. One way or another, my involuntary initiative, unlike many previous ones, turned out to be successful. Before the new commander of the regiment, Major Konstantin Iosifovich Krot, I appeared quite "on horseback".

However, the Germans became "good guys" only in completely hopeless situations, they grew wiser only from a ferocious beating, so we still had plenty of military deeds ahead of us. The 69th Infantry Division continued to advance and, having crossed the Shchara River under heavy enemy fire, reached Baranovichi. The city was taken by storm. Ivanov's corps and our division moved to Slonim, and here we again faced the same Shchara River, flowing in intricate bends, and again it was very difficult to overcome the water barrier due to the strongest enemy fire. Nevertheless, Slonim also surrendered to the mercy of the winner. On the evening of the next day, Moscow radio broadcast the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, where the 69th Rifle Division was mentioned for the seventh time. Moscow celebrated this event with a solemn salute, and the new regiment commander introduced me to another military award - the Order of the Red Banner of War.

I received this order only at the end of August, when the division was withdrawn to the second echelon. This was preceded by many significant events - both joyful and sad. In mid-July, the 237th Infantry Regiment liberated the city of Belovezha in the famous Belovezhskaya Pushcha and rushed to the Western Bug with battles. We returned to the same native border after three dramatic years, sweeping out the vile invaders. Our regiment reached the Western Bug, crossed the river and seized a bridgehead on the opposite - once Polish, and now German, bank. The state border of the USSR was restored! True, this was done only in a section of 12 km along the front. Our division was at the very tip of a deep wedge, which the 65th Army drove into the operational formation of the enemy, while other formations lagged behind, and scattered groups of Nazis wandered along the divisional rear. The enemy, enraged by our "impudence", decided to throw the division from the bridgehead by any means. On July 22, up to 800 fascists broke through our battle formations and attacked the headquarters of the regiment. The battalions at that moment were far ahead, the rear services and sanrote were just beginning to be pulled up to the headquarters. On a warm, fine day, on the edge of a dense forest near a large oblong wheat field, the staff officers and messengers, feeling in seventh heaven, undressed, took off their boots and began to stir the rich porridge in the bowlers. Suddenly, a sentinel from the headquarters ran up to the parking lot and shouted: “In the gun! Armed Germans are marching across the field! With cries of "Heil Hitler!" drunken thugs went ahead, firing explosive bullets at the bushes where the headquarters and rear men lay down.

Everyone had to fight. The regiment commander, Major Krot, personally led the battle. I remember how he ran from one group to another with a pistol in his hand, covered in blood from his wound. The fight was unequal, up to hand-to-hand, but we held out for several hours, destroying fifty Nazis. When the cartridges ran out, the fighters and commanders who remained in the ranks again rushed into hand-to-hand combat shouting “Hurrah!!!” to imitate supposedly received reinforcements. In this episode, 27 officers died before my eyes - I have never seen anything more heroic and tragic throughout the war. The enemy was driven back, but the bodies of our dead comrades lay mixed with German corpses on the ground. Moving a little forward, I stumbled upon the body of my best friend from school and the war, senior lieutenant Volodya Shestakov, to whom the Nazis managed to cut out the outlines of the Order of the Red Star on his chest and gouge out his eyes. This terrible picture shocked me so much that for the first time in the whole war I cried and for a long time I could not stop sobbing. This is the reality of war.

Having crossed the ford across the Western Bug, we moved back for the first time. The mood is depressed. Some of the officers, anticipating an inevitable disastrous meeting with enemy tanks, proposed a guerrilla method of survival - scattered, but this intention was rejected. We decided to go in an organized manner, along the same road that we had come here, and fight our way to our own. True, the further they went deep, the more individual horsemen were encountered who were not at all of a cavalry type and officers who were suspiciously "lagging behind" their units. We walked slowly, tensely, nervously, and only the extraordinary generosity of the convoy cooks, who offered full bowls of soup and porridge, brightened up the general mood a little. It was planned to break through in a swampy, impassable area, where the Germans could not fully use the tank lock. On the way out of the encirclement, they encountered not only loners who had lagged behind their units. But close to the disastrous gati head-on stumbled upon a unit of armed Czech satellites, enemies who were considering their future fate. We inclined them towards reason and realism, but, just in case, we disarmed them without firing a shot. And we were saved by this only kilometer-long path, along which we rushed to the attack towards a flurry of fire from enemy cannons and machine guns. Fortunately, the German tank barrier was late, our units of the division broke through from the encirclement, missing hundreds of fighters and commanders. Fierce fighting continued for another week, until our dashing tankers pulled up, as a result, the Germans faltered and began to retreat. On August 13, the 69th Rifle Division crossed the Western Bug again and entered Polish territory. Major Krot, who had previously retired due to a wound, was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Efimovich Shkuratovsky, who decided to nominate Captain Sukharev for the post of chief of staff of the regiment, about which he and his political officer, Major Nikitin, officially notified me. As acting chief of staff, I began to hastily master new types and areas of work related to offensive planning.

At the end of August, an order was received: to break through the enemy defenses, force the Narew River near the city of Pultusk and seize a bridgehead. On the morning of September 3, artillery began to speak, the elusive Katyushas rattled, bombers and attack aircraft took to the air. Deadly fire leveled the front line of the enemy's defense, and our infantry, supported by tanks and self-propelled guns, rushed forward. Breaking the resistance of the enemy, the units of the division reached the Narew River by the middle of the day and crossed it on the move. The Germans pulled up reserves and began to counterattack, trying to throw us off the bridgehead. Stubborn, bloody battles ensued. Our bridgehead on the western bank of the Narew was considered by the enemy command, and Hitler himself, as a "pistol aimed at the heart of Germany" and attempts were made to eliminate it at any cost. Fierce fighting continued for more than a month, and the most difficult for me were the first days of the appointment, the newly baked regimental chief of staff.

On September 10, 1944, in the midst of a fierce battle, when the regiment was suffering very heavy losses, the regiment commander ordered me and political officer Nikitin to cross to the eastern coast at all costs. Gather there everyone who can hold a weapon: clerks, riders, cooks, doctors, in a word, everyone we can find, and transport them to the bridgehead. The Narew was directly shot through by the Germans from the high bank, and we decided to quickly ride on horseback to the river along a shallow ravine and through deep brows get out to the left bank overgrown with bushes. However, our idea was not destined to come true. As soon as the hooves of the horses found the ford, three sighting artillery shots rang out one after another, and deafening explosions thundered near us, and a few seconds later the river literally boiled from a hurricane of bursts of shells and machine-gun bursts. The shore was already close when several shells exploded near me, and their jagged fragments pierced both my horse and myself. The horse, maddened with pain, groaned out from under me, with the last of its strength jumped ashore, fell in agony, kicking with all four legs and emitting pulsating fountains of blood. This terrible picture was the last thing that fixed my fading consciousness. Wallowing in the bloody foam, deafened and distraught, rammed by fragments of shells, he instinctively began to grab Nikitin with his healthy hand. I vaguely remember how the fearless commissar Alexander Nikitin, already on the shore, tore at me a uniform stitched with fire to stop the flowing blood of a dying friend, and then, at gunpoint, already at dusk, stopped the rider with a barrel of drinking water, helped attach the lifeless captain to it.

Then there was a medical battalion, a field hospital, rear hospitals in Sumy and Kharkov, several operations and a painfully long recovery. When he finally got on his feet, the war was already over. More than sixty years have passed since then, but the memories of the war do not leave me. And her sin is to be forgotten by everyone - both old and young, to no one, ever!