How long did the first manned flight around the Earth last? For the first time in the world, the Soviet pilot-cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin (1934–1968) flew into space on April 12, 1961. The Vostok spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 9:07 am Moscow time

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“How can you survive all this?”

The Grand Duke was the fifth son Emperor Alexander II and repeated the fate of his father, who was attacked by a revolutionary bomber in St. Petersburg in 1881. Then the “infernal machine” injured passers-by, and only scratched Emperor Alexander II’s face. Instead of hastily leaving the scene, the king began to help the bleeding unknown boy, and then the emperor was overtaken by the deadly bomb of his second accomplice. “I ask myself: how can one survive all this?” - Sergei Alexandrovich, who had previously buried Mother Empress Maria Alexandrovna, to whom he was more attached than other children. “How can you survive all this?” - the widow of Sergei Alexandrovich himself could now exclaim Elizaveta Fedorovna. Hearing an explosion that shook the glass in the Nikolaev Kremlin Palace, she ran out into the street and began collecting the remains of her husband scattered hundreds of meters around. One of the passers-by brought her Sergei Alexandrovich’s finger, which had a wedding ring on it. They lived in marriage for 20 years and almost never separated.

Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov. Photo: Public Domain

The couple moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1891, when Sergei Alexandrovich’s brother Emperor Alexander III, who ascended the throne after the bloody murder of his father, appointed his relative as governor of the ancient capital. In this post, the 33-year-old Grand Duke replaced the 80-year-old Prince Dolgorukov. Rolling up his sleeves, he took on the city's management. “Moskovskie Vedomosti” wrote a year later: “We did not know any potholes during this snow-rich winter. But what is especially striking is the improvement in street traffic due to the increase in the number of police posts in the busiest areas of the city.” Under the new mayor, electric lighting of the central streets was installed in Moscow, trams began to operate, and the entire water supply system was reconstructed. The famous was founded. The Grand Duke himself chose the construction site and architectural design for it. He was also the honorary chairman (now the State Historical Museum), and purchased valuable exhibits with his personal funds.

Together with his wife Elizaveta Fedorovna, they organized a network of nurseries in Moscow, where mothers could take their children for free for the whole day on full board, so that they themselves could work. The couple donated large sums to Sunday schools, those released from prison, poor students, the homeless, and orphanages.

Bride of Christ

The Grand Duke became the first member of the House of Romanov to die in the 20th century. His murder opened a terrible series of further massacres, during which the last Emperor Nicholas II with his family and the widow of Sergei Alexandrovich himself, who after his death sold all the jewelry and property in order to establish the famous Marfo-Mariinsky monastery in Moscow. There they helped the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged. Elizaveta Feodorovna herself became a sister of mercy. An amazing prophecy came true: during the years of a happy family life, Sergei Alexandrovich bought a painting Vasnetsova“Christ’s Bride”, in which the artist depicted his beloved and early departed young wife in the image of a nun. The Grand Duke saw in the image something close to his wife. And so it happened: after his murder, the beautiful Ella dedicated herself to God in the monastery she founded. And Vasnetsov painted another picture called “Christ’s Bride,” in which he depicted Elizaveta Feodorovna.

Elizaveta Feodorovna and Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov Photo: Public Domain

Predictions came true not only related to the painting “Christ’s Bride,” but also to Dostoevsky’s novel-prophecy “Demons.” Sergei Alexandrovich read this work as a teenager and discovered the writer for other members of the House of Romanov. (And in 1878, the Grand Duke was able to personally meet Dostoevsky, after which they met more than once.) “Demons” made a huge impression on the prince: he seemed to have a presentiment of how the “demons” of the revolution would burst in and distort his personal life, the life of the entire empire . That same “mixture of madness and meanness” that Vasily Rozanov wrote about after the assassination of Emperor Alexander II increasingly engulfed the country, literally devouring it. Starting with a bloody crime in the Northern capital - the murder of the Tsar, popularly nicknamed the Liberator for the abolition of serfdom and victory in the Russian-Turkish War, the “revolutionary infection” spread to the First See, where the first terrorist attack in the history of Moscow was committed in the Kremlin.

“Russian people! Let's come to our senses!"

“Shot after shot, explosion after explosion, blood after blood and murder after murder on Russian Land. ...Not in a fair battle, not in the face of an openly armed enemy, but from a villain who was waiting for a victim from around the corner... And the sons of the people, revered by their thinking part, as if nothing had happened, go on and on about their dreamy and overseas ideals, with their writings they breed and breed discontent in the country instead of calm, they bring division, discord instead of peace and harmony... Russian people! Let's come to our senses!" - said a famous person at the funeral service of the Grand Duke priest John Vostorgov.

The prince rested in the Kremlin in the crypt of the Chudov Monastery, which was blown up after the revolution. It was believed that his remains had disappeared without a trace. It can be called a miracle that in 1985, during restoration work on Ivanovo Square in the Kremlin, a crypt was discovered, inside a general’s uniform and a body, skillfully pieced together by Elizaveta Fedorovna. “Whoever loves me, pray for Sergei,” bequeathed the future saint. In 1995, the remains of the Grand Duke on a gun carriage and with a religious procession, which was personally led by the late Patriarch Alexy II, were delivered to the Novospassky Monastery, where the tomb of the Romanov boyars is located. Here the Grand Duke was solemnly buried. Nowadays, in the monastery, based on the surviving sketches of Vasnetsov, a cross monument that stood in the Kremlin at the site of the murder of the Grand Duke has been restored. Everyone who comes to the oldest monastery in Moscow bows to this cross.

When was the first air ram of the Great Patriotic War carried out?

Sofia Vargan

When it comes to talking about ramming attacks carried out by Soviet pilots during the Great Patriotic War, Nikolai Gastello is usually remembered, who threw his plane at a German column on June 26, 1941 near Radoshkovichi.

True, they are still arguing about who exactly was the author of the ram, the captain or captain Maslov - both planes did not return to the airfield. But that's not the point. The ram, widely known as the “Gastello feat,” is not an air ram, it is a ram against a ground target; it was also called a fire ram.

And now we will talk specifically about air rams - a targeted collision of an aircraft with a target in the air.

For the first time in the world, the ramming of an air target was carried out on August 26, 1914 by the famous pilot (he was also the author of the “dead loop”, which is also called the “Nesterov loop”). Nesterov, in a light Moran aircraft, rammed a heavy Austrian Albatross. As a result of the ramming, the enemy plane was shot down, but Nesterov was also killed. A ramming strike was written into the history of the art of piloting aircraft, but was considered an extreme measure, fatal for the pilot who decided to do it.

And now - the first day of the Great Patriotic War. “Today, the twenty-second of June, at 4 o’clock in the morning, without a declaration of war, German troops attacked our country...” - the voice reading out the statement of the Soviet government about the German attack on the USSR was heard in all corners of the country, except those where fighting was already taking place . Well, yes, those who suddenly found themselves on the front line did not need additional messages. They have already seen the enemy.

Many airfields were lost in the first minutes of hostilities - in accordance with the proven blitzkrieg tactics, German aviation bombed sleeping airfields. But not all. Some of the equipment was saved by lifting the planes into the air. So they entered the battle - in the first minutes from the beginning of the war.

Soviet pilots had only a theoretical idea about a ramming attack. This is understandable; it has never occurred to anyone to practice this technique in practice. Moreover, the history of aviation clearly defined a ramming strike as fatal to the pilot. And so - in the very first minutes of the war, the ramming began! And, most interestingly, not all of them turned out to be fatal.

It is almost impossible to determine who exactly carried out the first aerial ramming in the war. June 22 at about 5 a.m. senior lieutenant Ivan Ivanov, who served in the 46th Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed a Heinkel-111 in the Mlynov area (Ukraine). The pilot died during the ramming; he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously.

First ram? Maybe. But here - on June 22 at about 5 o'clock in the morning, junior lieutenant Dmitry Kokorev, who served in the 124th Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed a Messerschmitt in the Zambrova area. Kokorev remained alive after the ramming, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his feat, and died on October 12, 1941 near Leningrad.

June 22 at 5:15 a.m. junior lieutenant Leonid Buterin, who served in the 12th Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed a Junkers-88 in the Stanislav area (Western Ukraine). He died during the ramming. On June 22, at about 6 a.m., an unknown pilot on a U-2 plane (they were also affectionately called “ears”) rammed a Messerschmitt in the Vyhoda area (near Bialystok). He died during the ramming.

June 22 at about 10 a.m. Lieutenant Petr Ryabtsev, who served in the 123rd Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed a Messerschmitt 109 over Brest. The pilot survived the ramming attack - he jumped out. Pyotr Ryabtsev died on July 31, 1941 in battles near Leningrad.

Young guys decided to carry out ramming attacks, defending their land from the enemy. They did not think that the ram was fatal. Moreover, they expected to destroy the enemy and survive. And, as it turned out, this is quite real. They wrote not only heroic pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War, but also a new page in the history of aviation - a ramming strike is no longer a technique that definitely leads to the death of the pilot! Moreover, it later turned out that even an airplane could be saved by ramming - after some rams, the pilots even managed to land a fully combat-ready aircraft (except that the landing gear was broken off as a result of the ramming).

But that was later. And in the first minutes and hours of the war, the pilots going to ram knew only one example - Pyotr Nesterov, a hero of the First World War. And they took mortal risks. Not for glory, for victory. The pilots who threw their aircraft into the ram believed in what they told the whole country: “Our cause is just! The enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours!”

“And we need only one victory, one for all, we will not stand behind the price,” they did not stand behind the price, paying the maximum, giving their own lives for the sake of this one for all. They didn’t think which one of them would be the first with his ram; it’s for us, the descendants, who are interested in finding that very Hero. And they didn’t even feel like heroes. Pyotr Ryabtsev wrote to his brother about his ram like this: “I’ve already clinked glasses in the sky with one of Hitler’s fellows. He drove him, the scoundrel, into the ground,” this is not a description of the feat, he was not proud of the ram, but of the fact that he destroyed one enemy!

“A deadly fire awaits us, and yet it is powerless...” - the fire was indeed deadly, but it turned out to be powerless against them, such amazing people.