***
Oleg Yakovlevich Babak (February 25, 1967 - April 7, 1991) - deputy commander of the 11th company for the political part of the 21st operational brigade, lieutenant of the internal troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).
***
In the village of Victoria, far from Azerbaijan, Piryatinsky district, Poltava region of Ukraine, residents honor the memory of Oleg Yakovlevich Babak. Lieutenant of the Soviet army, who died at the age of 24. A Ukrainian lad, single-handedly defending civilians in the village of Yukhari Dzhibikli in the Gubadli region of Azerbaijan, was struck down by a vile bullet in the back by Armenian Dashnak murderers. This happened on April 7, 1991, on the day of Bright Resurrection. On the Resurrection of Christ, Armenian bandits violated the most holy commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Oleg alone fought an unequal battle with 80 Armenian fighters, among whom were mercenaries, dozens of them were killed to death by the fearless lieutenant. He fought until the last bullet. These non-human Antichrists were never able to defeat Oleg. They killed him like a jackal, with a shot in the back. An unarmed officer of the Soviet army...
On September 17, 1991, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, who is directly related to the outbreak of the Karabakh conflict, awarded him the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He appropriated it, alas, posthumously. This was the last decree on awarding the Hero of the Soviet Union. After him, no one else was awarded this title.
As it later became known (many Soviet media wrote about this), the unit where Oleg served received a request for help from local residents. Five people, led by Lieutenant Babak, got into the ambulance. The latter, it should be noted, was very loved by the local Azerbaijani residents. They loved him for his fairness, for his understanding of the situation and the foundations of the conflict, for his desire to always fight for truth, honor and conscience. Babak was even affectionately called “Babak” behind his back (the name of the legendary hero of the Azerbaijani people)
So on that ill-fated day, without a moment’s hesitation after receiving a request from local residents, Oleg ordered everyone to quickly get ready. According to his colleagues, until the last he believed that the Armenians would not be able to violate the most holy commandment “Thou shalt not kill” on Christ’s Sunday. But, Oleg, alas, even after long months of service, apparently, he still had little knowledge of the customs, orders and principles of the Dashnaks...
Oleg, his comrades and several civilians came under fire from Armenian militants. The lieutenant was not taken aback. He ordered everyone to retreat, only asking them to leave him some ammunition. “Leave the cartridges to me, and retreat yourself!”
It became known later that during the firefight, the militants suggested that Babak and his comrades leave on their own, leaving on the battlefield only an Azerbaijani policeman, wounded but continuing to shoot back, and Azerbaijani civilians. But Babak, naturally, did not even consider this option. Having ordered his colleagues to retreat along with civilians, he single-handedly decided to cover them and took the entire blow upon himself.
Oleg could not give up, exchange or abandon the Azerbaijanis, whose protection he considered the highest justice in a war not started by us - the Azerbaijanis. From the letters that Babak sent home, it became known that he spoke very warmly about the local residents, and was literally in love with the Azerbaijani nature, the land...
Today he would have turned 50 years old. Almost 26 years have passed since his death. All this time, Azerbaijan remembers this wonderful young officer. I am sure that many generations of Azerbaijanis will not forget the courageous and courageous act of a real officer, a man who considered it his duty to protect the peaceful Azerbaijani population, even at the cost of his own life...
***
You are alive in the soul of the Azerbaijani People,
I became close to my Motherland forever,
How her own son defended her freedom,
You served Truth and Good flawlessly.
You lived a life of unfading glory,
Like a true warrior without fear or reproach,
Without flinching, he accepted the bloody battle,
From the Dashnaks - these cruel evil spirits.
Alone, against a pack of bloody executioners,
You saved the inhabitants of a peaceful village,
Old people, mothers, brides and children -
Spring flowed with bloody tears.
In an unequal battle he killed dozens of murderers,
The bandits could not defeat the Hero,
He didn’t let them drown the village in blood,
The officer did not leave the battlefield...
The last Hero of the Soviet Union,
Entered the galaxy of martyrs of my country,
He was killed meanly, in the back, on the Bright Resurrection of Jesus,
From the hands of the Antichrist on the Armenian side.
Reviews
Karabakh is just a resort
fresh air and mountains outline
and the beginning of the collapse of the Union is a shame
and its harbinger a year earlier
and hero posthumously eSeSeSeer
VV deputy commander Olezhka Babak
became the last - Gorbachev managed
sign the decree and everything was like that
when they went to Stepanokert without weapons
companies with him just to say goodbye
then for six months in the Supreme they decided
How can they disown him?
he's an officer, it's his duty
expose yourself to foolish bullets
I feel sorry for Oleg - he saved the lives of others
and died because of you - tyrants!
you destroyed the USSR later
and State Emergency Committee - ballet on TV
and burning later - White House
Well, there was no truth - just like there isn’t!
Born on February 25, 1967 in the village of Victoria, Poltava region of Ukraine. After graduating from the Leningrad Higher Political School, he served in the Sofrino brigade of internal troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs as deputy company commander for political affairs.
During a year and a half of officer service, he spent 385 days in hot spots. He was awarded the medal "For excellent service in maintaining public order."
The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded by Decree of the President of the USSR of September 17, 1991.
"HELLO, my dear grandma, mom and dad!
I wrote you a letter from Moscow, it was supposed to be sent.
We flew from Vilnius on Thursday night and flew to Karabakh on Sunday. The road was exhausting, flight after flight. On the 7th (March 1991 - Ed.) I sent you a telegram. And on the morning of the 8th we went to work for 7 days, returning on the 15th. I am writing you a letter at the outpost. I’ll tell you what it is now.
This is an old abandoned house in a far, far away mountain village. The border with Armenia runs 1.5-2 kilometers away, right across the road, there is a road along the pass. All around there is a forest, already Armenian. This outpost is my farthest. The car barely crawled, and we walked another kilometer and a half.
Outpost high in the mountains. But one thing is good here - it’s quiet and no one bothers you. We have a potbelly stove here - we chop wood and heat it. We cook it ourselves - there is a stove with a cylinder. True, the gas barely burns anymore. But you can live like this. One problem - there was no light for four days. They heated lard and made a kaganets on the stove until they found kerosene. And today the light appeared, I don’t know for how long.
For three days there was such a snowstorm - waist-deep snow in the mountains. And today it was so hot - we sunbathed in the snow. It’s high up here, there’s a lot of ultraviolet radiation, everyone is sunburned.
There are still two days left. I don’t know how they will change us - everything has been carried away, and now, as everything melts, no one will get through to us. But let's see. I'll come back and send you an email. There is such beauty here. In the morning, donkeys scream like alarm clocks. On the 17th we will hold a referendum, and then they will let us go for the weekend. I must arrive in the first batch. But I won’t say exactly how it will happen. It will be seen".
On March 17, a referendum was held on the question of whether or not to exist the Soviet Union. Outwardly, it was held in a festive way, as elections to the Councils of People's Deputies always took place - scarlet red, cheerful melodies from the speakers, morning rise without the stern command of the elders, in a free manner. And the Slavic warriors cast their votes for the preservation of their native sovereign Union in a habitual, everyday manner, without worrying at all about the final result. Well, tell me, who, if in their right mind, if not a bastard, not a traitor to the Motherland, can speak out, even voting secretly, quietly, anonymously, for the collapse of a mighty country? This would be a crime against one’s own people!
These soldiers, who have not taken off their field uniforms for a year, for the state interests of the Indestructible Union, have more than once managed to firmly grapple with nationalists, separatists, simply bandits and looters profiting from the misfortune of others. Soldiers and officers of the Sofrino special-purpose brigade of the internal troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs have already managed to visit Fergana, Baku, Tbilisi, and Vilnius.
He, Oleg Babak, was still a cadet in both Baku and Yerevan. Now he’s sunbathing here, on the border between warring republics, which were previously called fraternal.
He does not complain about his traveling fate. He, the company's political officer, never needed special surveys and analyzes of public opinion in order to know for sure in advance that all his colleagues would support the preservation of the Union. "What are we fighting for?" - how often this question remains unanswered, hanging in the air like weightless bitter ashes. For Oleg, this question was never rhetorical. He always knew what military duty was, what the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the troops of law and order were intended for.
Once, while still a cadet, I wrote to a girl I knew:
“If you were a man, I would throw down the gauntlet (I would send it by post). You terribly insulted me, damn it! Not even me, but the troops of “Iron” Felix, who went through their glorious and difficult path from the Cheka to the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR ( Lenin is an honorary Red Army soldier of one of our units here.) For your information, in the internal troops they do not wipe their pants, but perform combat service, regardless - in peacetime or wartime.
And every time, when you are already sleeping like a mouse, a soldier, taking up his post, is adjacent to a magazine equipped with live ammunition. This means that not every war is visible. And in this one, too, life and death stand side by side. I won’t say anything more - I have no right. But I would like shame to bother you..."
His friend, for the time being an absentee student, comes from an intelligent family. She herself studied at the Institute of Culture, dreaming of becoming a director. Her interests include high poetry, intelligent prose, fashionable theater productions, foreign languages, and painting. Their postal romance began somehow by accident, out of nothing to do, for fun, when high school girls wrote letters to a military school, each to “the most beautiful cadet.” She was still playfully practicing the epistolary genre. He, a thoroughgoing rural guy in everything, who decided to become an officer, became seriously interested in his new acquaintance. Having found in her an intelligent interlocutor, he wrote both playful and humorous letters and seriously thoughtful ones, lively arguing on a variety of issues, of which young people have so many on the threshold of their future independent life.
Rich in soul, ardent young man diligently hid in his correspondence only the most tender, purely intimate experiences, not trusting them, like some kind of witness, even to a blank sheet of paper. But when the honor and dignity of the military uniform were attacked (although this often happened good-naturedly, without the desire to offend or offend, but only out of polemical young enthusiasm), Oleg was ready to give a decisive rebuff. From the first day at school, he was a staunch ideological fighter who took the oath once and for all. He loved military life not recklessly - for all his ardor and service passion, he saw not only black and white, he knew how to analyze, soberly assess the surroundings and those around him.
The girl, also a sensitive nature, soon realized that she had met an extraordinary person in Oleg. That’s why I saved these letters for many years.
“You wrote about the program “Visiting a Fairy Tale” and “Madhouse”. Why is that? If I knew specifically what they told you... But still, I will try to explain more or less clearly. The program “Serving the Soviet Union!” I I don’t like it either and I completely agree - it’s a parade. War is different. And the army is completely different. This is all for stupid tenth graders and sentimental old people. You write that half of your last name is military. They probably get paid well. Believe me - not in vain. And maybe someone’s nerves are getting in the way. Maybe it’s not noticeable outwardly, but it’s true. This is very hard and menial work. And thankless for everything (I mean material reward). Anything can happen in life differently than in movies and books, unfortunately for us.Well, these are already social problems.
About unflattering reviews. Believe me, please, that it is very difficult to explain to a person who sold his honor for imported clothes, who despises his own culture, art, who walked around with his head painted (there are a lot of them, even too many), what duty to the Motherland is, what the Oath is and what does “need” mean? Who doesn't want to live at 19?
Unfortunately, it has now become completely acceptable, not shameful, not to serve in the army. Why, if there is an opportunity not to serve? But before this was a matter of honor for a man! After all, this psychology has been developing over the years.
Living for yourself has become fashionable and prestigious. Look around at your peers, see how they live and what they breathe. Go out into the street in the evening, look around at a disco, go to a concert of some rock band. But they all come here. And the worst thing is that the school and even parents hope that the army will take on the function of re-education, since they already come there well-educated - bad or good.
And there are a hundred problems here. And don’t believe those who, having returned from the army, beat themselves in the chest and shout at every step: “I trampled the Afghan steppe!” Today we received a new addition to our support battalion (soldier battalion). They were brought into the dining room, all with their heads shorn. They didn’t even have time to change clothes - everyone was in jeans and still had a twinkle of arrogance in their eyes. So, today they will wash for the first time in the soldier’s bathhouse and put on their boots, and the light will go out.
KMB - a course for young fighters - they have nonsense. But you can’t believe your eyes when the greyhound starts snot along with a tear, please excuse me. And if you girls could see your “heroes,” maybe you wouldn’t have shaken hands with someone. You ask your relatives what hazing is, where it comes from, and how an intellectual student grows into cattle, and it’s not rude.
There is another side to the coin. There are different officers, some who cripple people morally. The bad thing is simple. And we pay for our mistakes with great blood and have already paid...
I want you to know that there are costs in training personnel. But the next time they tell you something like that, ask or ask, or rather, let him start with himself. And I am grateful to this “madhouse” for the fact that he taught me to appreciate everything that is real. And out of them, brats, he makes men capable of something. And being crazy, of course, is much more pleasant than tearing veins. So I’m writing to you, but I have to go to the “races”, but I don’t feel like it... That’s it.”
Oleg, like a commissar, stubbornly washed the army and his long-suffering troops from dirt and spit. He simply told his family, his fellow village classmates, and his distant friend the truth about the service, about life, which he knew first-hand. Puritan pacifists, who have been given free rein, are accustomed to seeing the military as entirely martinets, louts and ignoramuses. At the school, Oleg met kind, sympathetic comrades, smart, strict and fair teachers, tough and caring commanders. When they were awarded lieutenant epaulets in the summer of 1989, the joy of the long-awaited officership was mixed with the sadness of parting.
“I found such friends here! Those who starved with me, died in sweat, whose feet froze to their boots, and he gave a torn glove to the frostbitten fingers of a friend. Those who at a halt in 30-degree frost listened on the receiver in 3 o'clock in the morning to Aguzarova and passed his pack of Belomor around. And everyone smoked - smokers and non-smokers. I can't forget this. I found this. What did I lose? How many times do I ask myself this question. I can't answer...
My father wanted to come to me for 3 days, he received a letter today. And just in these three days I will be covering a hundred-kilometer march. It's a pity! As always".
“Today we took the PHYS test. For the first time in my life, I ran a 6 km forced march so badly. I carried two machine guns to my comrades myself, and today on the third kilometer I lost my breath, I literally wheezed for about 10 minutes. You know, today I realized , what is the hand of a close friend. Of course, they didn’t bring me a machine gun, I couldn’t allow this, but they ran with me and said: “Come on, rest!” I ran “excellently” with 3 minutes to spare..."
The cadets of the internal troops of the late perestroika-shootout 80s understood perfectly well what they had to be prepared for. The previous taiga convoy was already fading into the background for them. A fire broke out in the ruins of the country. Young cadets also became rescuers and saviors. He had no doubts about the correctness of the life path he had chosen once and for all. And after combat training in areas of emergency, which began to be called the habitually common term “hot spots,” he firmly established himself in the idea that without internal troops the country would be in complete trouble.
“I have already become a definite specialist in solving the national question. Oh, my beloved Yerevan! I slept about eight hours in three days. Today is the first day when we rest like human beings. We serve at night, and during the day we rest, which usually ends as soon as it begins We're running around like hell.
Yesterday they guarded the railway bridge and the path between two settlements, Armenian and Azerbaijani, with a barrier of 10 people. One shift was on duty, the other was sleeping. Near the fire I was tinkering with the station - I was a radio operator. You know, it’s a strange feeling: everything is quiet, only the branches are crackling, the guys are sleeping right on the ground, wrapped in raincoats. Someone coughs from the smoke and swears, and again it’s quiet. A train will pass, a military man is standing in some window, the wind through the open window flutters his tie. He will show: “Guys, no worries...” - and melt away.
And for the first time I learned how the wind can howl, tearing a machine gun out of my hands. Our fire crumbled into little stars. The rest was covered in rain. Everyone lay down on the ground to escape the wind. We got wet in two minutes. Only the radio operator tried to shout something into the air.
At five in the morning we were relieved. Everyone walked in silence, occasionally looking up at the beam of the border searchlight and at the lights of the American base on Great Ararat in Turkey.
That is how we live. An order was announced to postpone the vacation to September. It’s okay for me, but some people have weddings in August - they are tearing and rushing about. But our general promised us that if we return at least in the twenties, he will try to get us a vacation for August... To be honest, I’m tired, and I’m not the only one.
I have a wild desire to take a shower, have a proper shave and put on clean clothes - my cotton can be used as a radioactive element. I don’t even know what I want... Go home for a week. Somehow the army remade me, remade me. This morning I looked in the mirror on the way to my “barracks” and didn’t even recognize myself. In all seriousness, I didn’t even understand what was going on. He almost sang, falling on the political officer’s shoulder: “Mom, take me home.”
Oleg never liked to relax with a glass, even during vacation. Yakov Andreevich, the father, was once very surprised when his son asked to pour a hundred vodka. Seeing bewilderment in his father’s eyes, Oleg explained: “Volodka Akopov, my comrade, from our school, died in Abkhazia. Come on, dad, let’s remember...”
When, back in the eighth grade, Alla Boyko conducted a kind of survey of her classmates, all of them were asked the question: “What is life?” Oleg Babak then replied: “I’ll tell you in your ear before I die.” A line suddenly appeared in one of Oleg’s notebooks: “We go to the cemetery to visit friends on a date...” Perhaps this was written after the tragic death of his friend Sergei Komlev? Seryoga drowned while swimming. Oleg was very worried about the first loss...
Alexander Nakonechny, another fellow villager, fought in Afghanistan. In war, death is constantly on its bloody hunt. Sashko, thank God, returned alive. The reckless rural boy became a brave sergeant in the war, with the Order of the Red Star and the medal “For Courage” on his chest. The war was rarely talked about. Alexander, listening to Oleg’s stories about his special missions to areas of interethnic conflicts, was perplexed by the fact that the VVESH officers must account for each spent cartridge, that they serve at the same mountain outposts as in Afghanistan, surrounded by the same armed bandits, but not They have neither grenade launchers, nor “good” machine guns, nor even hand grenades.
The comparison of “our pocket Afghanistan” has already been made in relation to Karabakh, Soviet soldiers have already died there, popular dissatisfaction has already been expressed either with complete inaction or with half-measures taken by the supreme authorities of the country in relation to the national separatists.
When troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan in February 1989, Oleg was in his final year. In one of his letters to his native Victoria, he included a piece of paper:
"To my friend Sasha Nakonechny.
“In connection with the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan, I feel a feeling of deep sorrow and relief. Relief that our sons will no longer die, sorrow for those killed. And today, on the last day of the withdrawal of our troops, at the request of the parishioners of our parish there will be A prayer of thanks was served for the end of hostilities.
G. Logvinenko, priest of the Kursk-Belgorod diocese
Russian Orthodox Church".
The communist Oleg Babak fully shared the thoughts and feelings of the Orthodox priest...
***
HE ENTERED the political school deliberately, preparing to become a commissar. The image of the political instructor has already been smeared with black paint by the dishonest re-tellers of Russian history in their desire to make it an odious symbol of “totalitarian Bolshevism” and even “Stalinist lawlessness.” Oleg Babak knew how to adequately respond to detractors and slanderers...
At the Teplovsky secondary school, which bears the name of Hero of the Soviet Union A. Bidnenko, he often stayed after school for all kinds of social work: they played “Zarnitsa” (and he was a platoon commander in the lessons of basic military training), organized community work days, and amateur concerts. Nikolai Fedorovich, a historian, watched with satisfaction the debates that flared up spontaneously, in the development of some topic he had studied in social science or history. Somehow we started talking about communism. Valya Tesla, an inveterate debater, said:
- Communism is an illusion, a utopia. We cannot build a “city of the sun”. And so that “to each according to his needs” is unlikely. Now everyone uses their abilities only for themselves...
Nadya Vlasenko supported her friend. And Oleg just boiled:
- What are you talking about! Look how labor productivity is increasing, how living standards are rising.
- Is the level of consciousness also growing? Something is not noticeable. - The girls stood their ground. - No, Olezhka, nothing will work out with communism.
- Of course, nothing will come of it with such thoughts!
Oleg gave out to the apostates in full. For now it's school time. In a few years, the ideological debate will continue. This time, both Oleg himself and his student interlocutor will theoretically be more savvy. But Oleg, in addition, saw with his own eyes the tragic results of the “political somersaults” of the powers that be. He and his comrades already had to disentangle the bloody mess of perestroika, brewed by those who not only betrayed their own convictions, but also betrayed their people...
“You ask how I feel about being a communist at the present time. In March my candidate experience expires, and I think that in March I will already be a member of the CPSU.
But the party does not need to rehabilitate itself. Beria, Stalin, Brezhnev are not a party. Tukhachevsky, Kirov, Frunze, many others died precisely because they were communists. But a subjectivist assessment and such an approach to history does not shed light, but only gives the ground to judge such things too simply by people who are afraid or who do not have the strength and courage to dig and look at those problems that go beyond their own well-being and necessarily disturb the calm flow life. Why do they need the party, what does it give? Just pay dues? Where are the ideas? No ideas! This is such a complex topic, I just don’t want to go deeper now..."
The future political worker was not a blinkered retrograde, a cracker and a grouch. Nothing human was alien to him - he read a lot, sang with a guitar, and loved cheerful company. The girls liked him, and never allowed himself the slightest lie, insincerity, or rudeness towards them. He was witty and knew how to carry on a conversation, although at times he was very embarrassed by the attention paid to himself.
“I was at the Pushkin Theater, watching “Kutuzov.” A student from the textile institute was sitting next to me (I found out during intermission). Every time there was a shot on stage, she shielded me just in case from a stray bullet. I endured it for a long time. Then he said: “Dear girl.” , you’d better fall on the floor - it’s safer, and my sleeve will be safe." She replied that she preferred this method of protection, since not only bullets, but cannonballs would bounce off me. Then she sprayed for a long time periodically. Later we had a very nice talk, I spent even to the metro.
Then I was “beaten up” by my friend for my joke. He stated that he would never set foot in such places with me again. He said that I was an idiot and that not a single fool would marry me as long as I was like that... Then came the explanations in a harsh style. I agreed with everything... They laughed all the way to the checkpoint...
I was at the Scorpio concert. It was something! There was no more screaming, excuse me for the simplicity of my soul, they were undressing. I didn't know where to look. This is a must see - the “metal” girls stepped on the gas. How I returned alive, I don’t know. He came, lay down in his most affectionate, tender and beloved bed, shouted “Heavy metal!” three times. and fell asleep..."
It was not by chance that he chose the play “Kutuzov” in his repertoire. Oleg said this to his classmates at the school: “Mikhailo Illarionich and I, one might say, are fellow countrymen - after all, he was still a captain in my Piryatyn.” The guys joked: “So, you too will be a field marshal, cadet Babak.” Jokes are jokes, but the personality of the great Russian commander seriously interested Oleg since his school years. L. Rakovsky's novel "Kutuzov" was almost a reference book. Oleg carefully studied any mention of Field Marshal and made extracts and quotes. When they started talking about Kutuzov with that student during the intermission of the performance, when she expressed another compliment to her handsome acquaintance, the brave cadet, not without some panache with pathos, said: “Dear young lady, I try not to forget the behest of old Kutuzov, who told us, the military: “ Your iron chest is not afraid of either the severity of the weather or the anger of enemies: it is a reliable wall of the fatherland, against which everything is crushed." That’s it! That’s where we stand!”
Of course, rock concerts and performances were rare holidays in his cadet life. Everyday life - classes in the classroom and in the field, guard duty (as one of the best, Oleg Babak served as a sentry at the school's Battle Banner), internships, business trips. On top of that, he was also a Komsomol leader and a member of the party committee.
“Recently we had a meeting of the Komsomol activists of the school. There were people! - this is understandable, guests from the district committees, and ... I led it. For the first time I had the opportunity to stand in front of such an audience. I don’t even remember the first ten minutes, but the rest of the time my shirt was only was drying up. I raised the question about one of these guys for whom ranks and offices were already ready. You know, I started to worry after. When... the clarifications began. It became insulting and bitter. Tomorrow I will go and speak out, I will fight. At least my conscience mine will be clean..."
Newly made lieutenants, full of ambitious plans, were joining the troops. The personal files of young officers were sent to the unit by special mail. The blue calico folders with the inscription “Secret” so far only contained a few pieces of paper. In the certification for awarding the first officer rank to Oleg Babak we read:
“During the period of study at the Higher Political School named after the 60th anniversary of the Komsomol of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, he established himself as a disciplined, executive cadet. He masters the curriculum with “good” and “excellent” marks. He has a broad outlook, reads a lot. Takes an active part in the public life of the unit. Secretary of the Komsomol bureau of the company. Member of the party committee.
He is easy-going in a team, tactful with his comrades, always ready to help, and enjoys authority. He is principled and speaks openly about the shortcomings of himself and his comrades. By nature he is calm, self-possessed, balanced. Sociable. Has a large circle of friends. He reacts correctly to criticism from comrades and comments from commanders.
He is not afraid of the difficulties of military service. He completed his military internship as a deputy company commander for political affairs with “excellent marks.” He showed high moral, moral and combat qualities. Confident in the forms of mass propaganda work. Pays special attention to individual educational work. Has high leadership qualities. Received good feedback on my work.
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While carrying out a government assignment in Transcaucasia, he showed himself on the positive side. He navigates well in difficult situations, makes the right decisions, and acts clearly.
He knows and follows general military regulations. Well developed physically. In terms of combat, he is smart. He knows the entrusted weapon and wields it confidently. He knows how to keep military and state secrets."
This characteristic is by no means a formal document written as a carbon copy. It was certified with their signatures by people who not only walked alongside their students through school corridors and training grounds, but also carried out service and combat missions in emergency areas. The company commander, Captain Krivov, the battalion commander, Colonel Tarasov, the head of the faculty, Colonel Nazarenko, the head of the school, Colonel Smirnov, and the head of the school, Major General Pryanikov, knew Oleg Babak very well. He never showed off in front of his superiors, did not fawn in anticipation of rewards, he simply conscientiously comprehended the harsh science of winning...
***
- ...THE HERMIT, he calmly, like everything he did in life, raised his cross for Russia and blessed Dimitri Donskoy for that battle, Kulikovo, which for us will forever take on a symbolic, mysterious connotation. In the duel between Rus' and the Khan, the name of Sergius is forever associated with the creation of Russia.
Yes, Sergius was not only a contemplator, but also a doer. A just cause is how it has been understood for five centuries. Everyone who visited the monastery, venerated the relics of the Saint, always felt the image of the greatest beauty, simplicity, truth, holiness resting here. Life is mediocre without a hero. The heroic spirit of the Middle Ages, which gave birth to so much holiness, gave its brilliant manifestation here. - The fragile girl guide preached easily, inspiredly quoting the lines of the wonderful Russian writer Boris Zaitsev about Sergius of Radonezh. She preached sincerely believing, it was easy to read in her eyes.
And this faith flowed into those who listened with their souls in a passionate desire to comprehend the moral background of the solemn and festive splendor of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.
“It would be nice to bring all our fighters here,” Oleg Babak gave an idea to his comrades when the tourists left the temple on a sunny day.
“Then you, Comrade Commissar, will have to be ordained,” joked Igor Mityakov. - A regimental priest is a normal position, approximately a lieutenant colonel, something like the deputy head of the political department.
“Well, they killed me,” Sasha Yatsura entered the conversation. - Our Olezhka and suddenly - a saint! I won't believe it for anything!
But the mockingbirds immediately fell silent when they entered under the arches of another temple, where candles flickered, where there was a blissful smell of incense, where the faces of the saints looked at the silent laymen inquiringly, sternly and at the same time mercifully.
-...They are under construction. They are going to their death. Sadness and fate - and inevitability. It is clear that there is no return...
A trembling ran through the large, strong body at that moment. Oleg rolled his eyes to see if any of his comrades had noticed his sudden confusion, when the blood rushed to his head and his heart sank uncomfortably. But the comrade lieutenants, mingled with the motley crowd of excursionists, were thoughtful and quiet, and the voice of the very young seer-preacher sounded evenly and inevitably, telling about the life of St. Sergius of Radonezh, patron of the Russian land, confessor of the Russian army, the righteous:
- The martial arts of Kulikovo Field have gone beyond historical proportions. Created a legend. There is also something absurd in it. Let the details disappear, but, of course, myth senses the soul of an event better than an official of historical science. One can reject the news that Demetrius gave up the grand ducal mantle, and he himself fought as a simple warrior, that, wounded, he was found on the edge of the forest after a thirty-mile pursuit. It is unlikely that we know how many troops Mamai had and how many Dmitry had. But of course, the battle was special and with the stamp of fate - a collision of worlds...
The tour of the Lavra is over. The blue-eyed guide to the holy places left for a new portion of Zagorje pilgrims. The special forces lieutenants, for once wearing civilian clothes, enjoyed life carefree and recklessly, like children, forgetting or simply not wanting to think that in an hour the nimble green snake-electric train would return them to their “location”, and the golden domes of Sergiev Posad would run away, and the world will become smaller again, enclosed by a barracks and a concrete fence, and the multicolor will disappear, leaving only the protective shades of a camouflage uniform in the lieutenant’s monastery.
Friends and fellow soldiers exchanged opinions about the “Canons” and “Nikons” that the gray-haired foreign excursionists clicked, and did not ignore the merits of the young compatriot excursionists. And Oleg somehow shut himself up, peering intently into the faces of the bearded monks passing by and the very young seminarians, also in black, who silently and thoughtfully walked in the park, holding heavy volumes in their hands. What feeds them, how do they live?..
That trip to Orthodox shrines awakened something deeply hidden in Oleg, which until now he had only thought about occasionally and in passing. “Life is mediocre without a hero” - simple and deep words sank into the soul. He often thought about the invisible, intangible line between life and death as a schoolboy. Now, a military man who has smelled gunpowder in an evil, sometimes merciless reality, more and more often, and not only in political conversations with soldiers, but also to himself, he uttered the words “hero” and “feat.”
Having learned that his friend was going with a student group to the Spitak earthquake zone, he wrote to her:
“You know, when I received your letter that you were flying to Armenia, I somehow involuntarily smiled at the words “giving up warmth and comfort” and thought that you would understand all this a little later, and such words would not be there later, upon your return , if, God forbid, you have to go there or somewhere else a second time.
Our guys have been there for more than two months. Now they are sending the 1st course. You write about newspapers that say the wrong thing. Don't know. But I have some kind of ability to see more behind the meager lines. We're already used to it. Do you know how funny it is to read some late comments on events. When you suddenly find out that you represented all the military outfits at some large and stupid meeting with your friend and platoon commander and thought about your armored jacket: “My good, golden one...” But the newspaper still prefers not an outfit of three "kamikaze", and the outfits.
It’s just that over time you acquire the ability to see some kind of subtext. And what kills most of all is that there are people who start squabbling again. There is such grief all around. I have a very simple view of such people.”
About unkind people, however, he spoke exactly as much as they deserved - little. He could talk endlessly and excitedly about his friends and comrades:
“I looked at the photographs... I looked at the tanned faces of my friends, at the faces that were painfully familiar. And I really wanted something like this, you know... I would like it for them, you know... Well, at least like this: “Guys, go away, I’ll cover you!” Thank God, you don’t have to do that.”
Thoughts and feelings entrusted to a piece of paper, expressed to a loved one - a premonition of fate? Fate predicted a feat and prepared a high and tragic mission for the hero...
***
- THIS IS HOW we live, yoldash lieutenant. - The owner of the house, the old village teacher Hasai-muellim, placed his knobby hands, like the roots of an old tree, dark from the tan of years, on the table. - It got really bad. There is no one to work: those who are younger are trying to go to the regional center of Kubatly or to Baku. Some live in Russia. Gulam Nazarov has two sons - officers: Hasan serves in the Soviet Army, and Zahid - in your troops, internal, in Arkhangelsk, like you, he is a company commander.
Of course, they are very worried about us - after all, there is a war going on here. Tell me, what happened to the people? I don't understand at all! Previously, our children went to school in Shurnukh, there, on the highway. The Armenians and ours studied together. Now there are militants in Shurnukha, “bats” or what? On this road, Kafan - Goris, everyone used to drive calmly, but now it is a border. How many villages around have become completely empty - Mazra, Gadilli, Eyvazly, Seitas, Davudlu... People are running from the bandits. The bandits go there - they burn houses, shoot at them, and steal livestock. Five of our cows were also stolen recently. What to feed the children, huh?
At these words, Lieutenant Oleg Babak almost choked on the meager treat that the elderly Azerbaijani had heartily put out - lavash, yogurt, green onions. For them, he is a big man, a boss, a gentleman, a comrade, which means a lieutenant. The locals also found out that the military themselves call Babak Babak. There was such an Azerbaijani hero of the national liberation struggle, a character in many works. Oleg-Babek was completely respected by ordinary peasants. His soldiers help preserve life in the tiny village of Yukhary Dzhibikli. "Yukhary" means "Upper". The upper ones are for sure: the height here is one and a half thousand meters. On the one hand, it seems like an utter wilderness. But if you look at it from another perspective, it’s a piece of paradise: crystal air, springs. Every peasant has well-groomed gardens and vegetable gardens. The mountain pastures are excellent. Pristine forests - and you have firewood, and berries and nuts, and birds sing, and there are animals...
Beast... The pastoral-idyllic picture suddenly disappeared, as if the colorful landscape slide was abruptly replaced by a frame of black and white front-line chronicle - burnt houses, cars mangled by explosions and shots, corpses. A two-legged beast now roams these parts, preventing people from living on this beautiful land.
- We will not leave, Hasai muellim. - The lieutenant shook the old man’s hand and thanked him for the treat. He went up to his outpost, peering with his usual wariness at the darkening mountain range on the left. The same Goris-Kafan highway runs there. They used to call it the road of life, but now...
I didn’t want to think about bad things - there was no point in making me sad, and especially not on my boys. Gray, a Zastavsky dog, ran out of the twilight, recognizing him, barked friendly, began to fawn and jump around.
“Well, well, it’s good to pamper,” Oleg patted the dog’s shaggy scruff, “come on to the post, guard, work off your rations!”
A thick, measured rumble was heard from the side of the highway - an Armenian column was coming. Oleg hurried to the outpost - he needed to see who was coming and what they were carrying. Cursing for the umpteenth time due to the lack of binoculars at the outpost, the officer quickly disconnected the sniper scope and began to observe the “front line” through the eyepiece crossed out by the scale: ahead was a Belarusian truck, then covered KamAZ trucks, some red tanks like fuel tankers, a truck with militants, a convoy UAZ brought up the rear. This is where they need an eye and an eye: often it is their last car that stops, the militants fire several bursts in the direction of the village - they say, know ours - and quickly run away.
Today there were no shots fired. Maybe they themselves were tired of firing, maybe the head of the Armenian military guard was smart and didn’t want to provoke the military to return fire, especially since the column apparently also had tankers with fuel. “Well, thank God,” thought the lieutenant, threw a winter jacket over his steep shoulders and sat down on the parapet of the post closest to the outpost.
A cold night with cold stars was falling on the mountains. They seemed prickly in the lifeless black space, and a glance turned to them did not arouse thoughts about the infinity of the Universe and the immortality of the soul. On the contrary, until his temples ached from the blood rushing to them, the lieutenant wanted to be at home, in warmth and comfort. The same stars there, when you look at them from the flat land of Poltava, are warmer and closer, and do not prick your heart, but fill it with even light and the joy of life.
Here... “Beyond the mountains, burn, darken, shine with grief, water with blood,” - this is what Taras Shevchenko wrote in his “Caucasus”. This great poet was Oleg’s idol, his portrait was pasted into Babak’s cadet notebook, his volumes were always at hand. Quite recently, in one of his letters to his mother and father, he admitted: “I’m reading Kobzar now, my heart hurts. Such a man was great...” Wasn’t it those lines about mountains sown with grief and watered with blood that caught the eye of the lieutenant in Shevchenko’s Tomike, didn’t they make your heart ache? God knows...
And today is Easter night, Oleg remembered. There, far away, there are Easter cakes in huts, surrounded by colorful colors. And tomorrow there will be a Bright Resurrection, and people will be smiling, kind to everyone, friendly to everyone and joyful with their whole lives, despite sorrows and adversity, and will be filled with faith and peace. In his native Victoria, guys and his friends and comrades will kiss and kiss beautiful girls with cheerful mischief...
And here people are killing people. Why? Is it really in their nature, in their blood? Recently, Muslims celebrated their main holiday of the year - Navruz Bayram. On this day, as the locals explained, the fiercest enemies must reconcile, forget feuds and grievances. But just on this holiday in Khojallah, the car of the NKAO prosecutor, our medical battalion, and the guard at the checkpoint were fired upon. Or is it that the holy commandments do not apply to people of other faiths? It turns out like this: both sides convince us of the peacefulness of their faith, and shoot at each other day and night. Tomorrow is Easter...
At the outpost during these days, I re-read all the few books and magazines, got to the old one, from some long-past year, with the pages half torn out. I read there a pathetic phrase from one of the writers: “For everyone, Christ has risen! All of us, big and small, rich and poor, Jews and Greeks, let us all stand up and embrace each other from the fullness of our souls!”
He sighed hopelessly and bitterly: “If only!..”
There was very little time left until midnight. Glancing at the starry worlds, the head of the outpost stood up to once again go around the posts...
***
SUNDAY turned out to be bright and sunny at first...
One and a half kilometers from the village, local residents discovered the body of forester Shahin Mamedov. His cousin Garib Nazarov has gone missing. The Azerbaijanis, naturally, came to the military for help. Where else should they go if there is only one local police officer among the government representatives in the village?
Meanwhile, information about the two missing Azerbaijanis went “in a big circle”, since direct communication with the battalion was hampered by the same picturesque mountains that “gloomy around”. As if through a broken telephone, Major Viktor Burdukov was told: “Two soldiers disappeared on the 16th.” Although the phone was damaged, it was not child’s play; the battalion commander felt something unkind and decided to send a maneuver group to the outpost. Cars, as always, are in short supply. Fortunately, that day there was a “tablet” on duty - an ambulance UAZ-452. Who should I send? We need reliable people, capable of making smart decisions in the most difficult situations, away from the base. There are many of these in the battalion, but they are all involved, scattered around outposts and checkpoints. One word - tension.
The crew of the combat vehicle consisted of the chief of staff of the battalion, Captain Igor Shapovalov, the chief medical officer of the brigade, the "Afghan", the colonel of the medical service Vladimir Lukyanov, the most experienced senior sergeants, two Alexei - platoon commander Bochkov and the company sergeant major Loginov. Private Alexander Lizogub was driving the tablet. We gathered quickly - in full combat.
In the Berkushad hotel in the regional center of Kubatly, where the battalion of Sofrintsev was quartered, the slogan “Fulfill the task. Return home alive and healthy” was written in large numbers on the calico paper. This is blatant, visual propaganda. It seems like in many civilian car depots, where a painted baby reminds drivers leaving for a flight: “Dad, we are waiting for you from work.”
The goner “pill”, now wheezing hysterically, now sneezing pathetically, climbed the clay zigzags. The road to "sixteenth" is nowhere worse. In spring, it is common to see gullies from melting snow in the mountains and rocky screes. You go around them - the wheels almost hang over the cliff. The squiggle turns on this “donkey path” are such that even a small
The "UAZ" cube fits right in. The military is also in a bad mood: in bulletproof vests, helmets, with weapons, during the mountain rally all their sides and soft places were beaten, and they were also quite hungry, since they rushed on alert without lunch. But most importantly, the questions were a thorn: “What happened? Who’s missing?” An hour and a half, during which we covered twenty-two kilometers of mountain serpentine, seemed like an eternity...
They were offered lunch in Ayin - the village was along the way, and there was also a Sofrin outpost there. But they didn’t linger, they just knocked with their fellow Slavic soldiers with Easter paints, cooked for lack of other paints with onion skins.
Having made the last push to the ill-fated Upper Jibikley, we breathed a sigh of relief, having clarified the situation. The main thing is that everyone at the outpost is alive and well. And the fact that the body of a local resident was found and the second Azerbaijani disappeared is sad, of course, but this has already happened, let the commandant’s offices of the neighboring districts, the Armenian Goris and the Azerbaijani Kubatli, look into it together.
While the officers were analyzing the chaotic information that the locals were vying with each other, the soldiers decided to have lunch. The soldiers did not know where to seat the two Alekseevs - Loginov and Bochkov - or what to treat them with. And the reason is not only and not so much in their “grandfatherhood”, seniority, demobilization privileges - at the outpost, especially the farthest one, guests are always welcome.
But the guys barely had time to bring the spoons to their mouths when Lieutenant Babak commanded: “Guys, stop eating, otherwise everything will come back - we’ll carry the corpse. Let’s go.”
The demobilized soldiers had to tighten their belts again and put on their armor...
At the outpost, meanwhile, passions were heating up. The women screamed heart-rendingly and, as is usual here, in a frenzy they tore out their hair and scratched their faces. The soldiers felt as if their souls were being scratched. The few children looked pitiful and hunted. Gray-haired elders pointed their fingers towards Armenia and vying with each other shouted curses. They grabbed the lieutenant by the sleeves, demanding: “Yoldash Babek, please help us!”
It was necessary to go to the scene of the incident - the military were accustomed to responding to the first call for help. Captain Shapovalov remained at the outpost. Lieutenant Babak, who knew the way, led the alarm group.
(In subsequent showdowns, some high-ranking officials reproached the actors in those events for “ill-considered decisions and hasty actions.” They say that if they had not then gone for the corpse of the murdered forester, then... They say, let the Azerbaijanis themselves take it out.
To these rational military officers, the battalion officers are ready to present their “if only”: if there were an armored personnel carrier at the outpost, if there were hand grenades, binoculars... Moreover, if we take into account the treachery of the bandits, which during three years of war the gullible Slavs were in no way they'll get used to it. Yes, if only they would forget on both sides of the border the word “revenge”, which corroded human souls with rust. If...)
The “tablet” climbed up the mountain slope again and soon stopped near a group of people. District police lieutenant Guseinov, the murdered man's fiancee, his sister and several other local men did not dare to go down the cliff and were waiting for the military.
It is a difficult task to drag a dead body up a steep, almost hundred-meter cliff. Under the worn tread of the soldiers' boots, small pebbles crumbled, or loam slid, covered with a layer of last year's rotten leaves, through which thin arrows of grass made their way on the sun-warmed spots... But the military had no time for the delights of the spring forest. Bochkov and Loginov were sweating profusely. The corpse tried to slip out, its bloody insides, torn apart by bullets, rumbling and squelching disgustingly. Several terrible, fatal wounds left no doubt that the forester was shot almost point-blank.
They began to lay the body on a stretcher when a white Niva appeared on the Goris-Kafan road... The grandfather, a seasoned “Afghan” Colonel Lukyanov, calmly and clearly said: “Look, Oleg, now they’re going to kill us.” And he took his machine gun at the ready... The Azerbaijani elders' eyes sparkled: “Ermeni! They killed it! Yoldash Babek, give me the machine gun! We ourselves...”
- Yourself, yourselves... Yourself with a mustache! - Babak only managed to curse to himself and even shout to the civilians: - Hide! Let's run home!
The bandits fired several guns at once. Having ambushed the Azerbaijanis, they saw that they had arrived accompanied by soldiers of the internal troops. But, apparently, the wolves did not want to leave without prey. They clearly saw a red cross in a white circle on the side of the car - and one of the bullets hit it. A 5.45 mm automatic pistol tears metal. Human flesh - even more so. The militants were unable to get trained, dexterous military fighters; in response, they gave a short line of standing, as if warning: “Don’t joke with us.” But even from the track they fired to kill, not out of fright. Our guys fired one more line at a time - this time from the knee, and when they realized that things were taking a serious turn, they lay down. But the bandits felled the Azerbaijanis with the very first shots, as if at a shooting range. Neither the men, nor even the women, in their confusion, were able to even adequately hide, but only crawled under the fire of the Armenians on all fours.
Police Lieutenant Huseynov's hip was sprained. So he was unable to carry out Lieutenant Babak’s commands: “Take your people away, we’ll cover you!” Now you could only rely on yourself.
They managed to push some of the wounded into the “tablet”, where the forester’s corpse had already been loaded, and two more locals went with them. Grandfather Lukyanov, covering the retreat, fired from his hand directly from the cockpit, dexterously, without throwing back the butt. The colonel was without a bulletproof vest, but fought bravely, did not try to hide even in his battered tin with a red cross. He rushed to the outpost, deciding to take some of the civilians out from under fire and immediately return with reinforcements and ammunition. At first, Babak had five magazines, but he gave one to the colonel to ensure a retreat (Grandfather shot two of his horns in a battle near the road). The cartridges from the four magazines per brother that the sergeants had taken with them were also melting away.
Lieutenant Babak, realizing that it would not be possible to quickly leave with the remaining wounded Azerbaijanis, took up defensive positions. With him were reliable guys, two senior sergeants, two Alexei - Loginov and Bochkov. He trusted them as much as himself...
A dozen and a half militants who started the battle against the military - that’s all right. A strong three could pin them down for a while. But after some minutes, a cloud of sixty to seventy people drove up along the highway from the direction of Kafan in three covered trucks - they were Urals or ZILs. It became clear that we had to leave: until the car with help returned, anything could happen. But now it was also not easy to retreat - police lieutenant Huseynov was seriously wounded. True, he still fired back from his machine gun, but he could no longer move independently. It was hard for the wounded girl, too, but at least she managed to hide in relative peace.
The fire was so dense that you couldn’t raise your head.
Babak watched the movement of the Armenians, and his thoughts were short and clear, like machine-gun bursts of two rounds: “Draw out the locals... Punish the jackals... Don’t expose yourself...”
While his sergeants were nearby, they talked and consulted.
- Maybe the turntables will come?
- What “turntables”! They're in Stepan, but you can't call them... It's a dead thing!
- Sergeant major, go to the outpost!
- I won’t go, I’m with you!
Loginov crawled about thirty meters away, stretching the militants along the front, distracting them towards himself. Inwardly, he had already said goodbye to his mother and everyone. He fought his own battle. Babak and Bochkov are their own. They recognized each other only by the voice of the machine guns.
Now only the lieutenant and the platoon commander were talking.
- Lesha, if they bypass us, we’ll be finished! Go ahead and leave if you can.
- What are you doing?! We came together, we will leave together!
- Then try to rush up the slope!
And the slope begins with a loose ledge - how can you jump on it in heavy armor under fire? Bochkov was already preparing to make such a desperate leap, but he barely moved, grouping himself for the jump, when he was hit with a machine gun literally centimeters away from him. The bullets hit so close that lumps of earth fell on my head and shoulders. They have already been taken into the fork.
- No, we won’t do that. - Babak did not want to give the initiative of the battle to the enemy. - You will cover my back, and I will cover yours. You can't be surrounded.
They moved closer to each other. They became even closer.
- Lekha, if we get out today, I’ll be fine, today is Easter! Wait, there will be “turntables” soon!
- What are you talking about, Oleg, what “turntables”! All hope is in the outpost, and there are sixteen people there with us - where to fit into a company.
Instead of our helicopters, a bandit armored personnel carrier appeared on the highway. Bochkov sinfully thought that his namesake was no longer there - Loginov’s machine gun was silent, and in the area where the foreman was spinning, last year’s dry grass, set on fire by tracers, was already burning with might and main.
But Loginov, a handsome man, still managed to crawl away, drawing half of the militants towards himself and taking fire from a heavy machine gun from their armored personnel carrier.
There were pauses in the firefight for up to five minutes. Ours had one last round of cartridges left. The militants did not dare to intervene, having already lost several people.
Bochkov crawled onto the track. Now he was the closest of the three to the militants. But the sun bothered him - right in his eyes. When a cloud came over, he fired accurately. When the sun was blinding, he fired short bursts at the sound.
He and the lieutenant crawled another ten or two meters. Bochkov hears:
- That's it, Lekha, they passed us by! Close your back - we'll stay here!
Now they have slid off the road to the side of the road. The political officer was covering Bochkov’s back from the side of the slope, along which the militants had already deployed in a chain. It turned out that the two of them took up a perimeter defense.
It was possible to leave that spot only along the road, on one side of which there was a gaping cliff, on the other, a slope already occupied by militants. Every centimeter of the road was under fire.
Bochkov suddenly heard:
- Hey, soldiers! Drop your weapon and hey.....we'll give you five minutes!
Obviously the Russian fought on the side of the Armenians - the swearing was classic, no accent. Then another voice, with an accent:
- Soldiers, leave! Leave the weapons and the Azeris!
Bochkov heard the militants talking in line as they made their way around the slope. The snipers competently indicated targets to their machine gunners - the tracers whistled just a few centimeters from Babak and Bochkov.
- Leave! - the political officer ordered Bochkov.
He did not follow the order. We lay under bullets for another ten minutes, responding with single bullets, so that the enemy would understand that the military would not let them approach.
- Go away, they are coming!
Bochkov was now lying on his back, half-turned towards the slope, about one and a half meters below the road surface. Babak suddenly stood up - Bochkov saw his head, shoulders, approximately up to his shoulder blades. Last thing I heard:
- Stop! Do not shoot! I am alone!
Bochkov was scared: “Why did you get up? We don’t have grenades, nothing for close combat!” Then I realized: “Takes me away. Gives me one last chance.”
A bearded man in a sweater, with a long barrel that looked like a carbine, began to run behind the lieutenant. Bochkov feverishly figures out what to do. There is no way to shoot: the lieutenant is alone among the bandits. If you cut down one of them, the rest will immediately shoot Oleg at point-blank range.
The one with the carbine shouted something to his friends in Armenian. Then, seeing the Azerbaijanis hiding in the bushes, he ran towards them. Bochkov and the wounded policeman were given a short burst at the same time - they killed him. Immediately the militants moved heavy fire in their direction...
Bochkov managed to change his place in the chaos and slipped about five meters. Quiet. There are two or three cartridges in the horn, no more. As they say, as a last resort...
Then I heard a familiar voice: “Lekha, Lekha!” It was Sergeant Mitkovsky. Help arrived from the outpost. The car had to be left a little further away, around the bend, where the Armenians could no longer reach it. Grandfather Lukyanov crawled toward retirement under bandit bullets. He should have stayed at the outpost, but he, up to his elbows in blood, bandaged the wounded, pulling them out from under the fire. He reproached himself for taking one machine gun from Babak during the first shootout. But now he was reassured by the fact that he seemed to have made it on time - Sergeant Edik Mitkovsky and Private Zhenya Nebesky were already supporting the lieutenant and Bochkov with fire, and Corporal Alexey Dubina and Private Alexey Durasov cut off the bandits from Loginov. Sergeant Andrei Medvedev and Private Eduard Kulagin opened the zinc with cartridges and loaded the magazines.
Everyone began to move towards the “tablet”, near which the chief medical officer was wrapping bandages on the wounded policeman and the girl, injecting them with promedol. Bochkov, as the eldest, reported to him and exhaled:
- The lieutenant was captured!
- Oh, f...!
Then, having scrolled through the options in my head, not at all threateningly, but as if persuading:
- Guys, let's get into the car, I have no right to risk you! Let's get him out! The main thing is to be alive...
The wounded policeman and the girl were dragged into the car. The soldiers grabbed hold of the broken windows. Loginov and Dubina took off their bulletproof vests to cover the driver from the side of fire: one armored vest was hung on the door, the second - behind the back. Oh, these golden boys! In battle, they thought not about themselves - about their comrade. So, firing back, they rushed to the outpost...
They barely had time to catch their breath when they saw the long-awaited armored personnel carrier. The reserve group was led by Lieutenant Vasily Atamas.
Bochkov, who had last seen Babak only about half an hour ago, suggested to the battalion chief of staff:
- If they managed to take him away, we go out onto the highway and take any car with hostages. Let them try not to give Babak away...
***
“It’s a GREAT place,” Lieutenant Vasily Atamas will later say about the vicinity of the village of Yukhary Dzhibikli. For a long hour and another twenty-five minutes, their armored personnel carrier moved to the battlefield from Kubatly. Atamas knew only one thing so far - his friend Oleg needed help, with whom more than a pound of salt had been eaten both at the school and in the brigade. I knew that I had to hurry, but I didn’t push my driver. Sergeant Edik Safronov, a young fellow, understood everything himself. That mountain road is actually impassable for an armored personnel carrier. That raid was, by and large, an unthinkable adventure. But they passed!
When the armored personnel carrier entered the battlefield, waving its barrels and triplexes, one thought drilled into Atamas’s brain: “Where is Oleg?” Vasily was not afraid of militants.
Lieutenant Babak lay without a bulletproof vest, without a machine gun. Unable to defeat the officer in battle, he, unarmed, was meanly killed when he rose to his full height to stop the bloodshed...
The lieutenant and his guys fulfilled their duty with honor - they did not allow the bandits to massacre peaceful peasants. It was not they, the soldiers of the internal troops, who started that unequal battle. They led him with dignity. All the evil the bandits took out on the lieutenant with monstrous cruelty - a bullet in the back, point-blank.
As soon as the hatches of the armored personnel carrier opened, bullets began to rattle like peas on the armor. But Vasily Atamas could not leave his friend on the battlefield. He ordered the slope to be processed using all available weapons. The militants did not admit to their losses in that battle. And they didn’t believe that an officer and two sergeants held out against their company for several hours...
***
OLEG Babak was buried in his native village of Victoria. There are many flowers at the grave of the last Hero of the Soviet Union. They are brought by good people - fellow soldiers on memorial days, schoolchildren on Victory Day, newlyweds on wedding days. When in October 1991, at the village club, Nadezhda Ivanovna and Yakov Andreevich were awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal, Oleg’s military brothers-in-arms, holders of the Order “For Personal Courage”, reserve sergeants Alexey Loginov and Alexey Bochkov, one from the Smolensk region, came to the Poltava region. the second from Omsk. Over the grave of their political officer, both of them sincerely said: “We owe our lives to Oleg...” That’s right - there’s nothing to add or subtract here. People never lie at a friend's grave...
 |
In the Central Museum of Internal Troops there is the last letter from the last Hero of the Soviet Union. There are only a few lines on a crumpled page torn from a school notebook. But how many thoughts they give us! When and in connection with what did Oleg decide to write these words? Sometimes he would write down a dream he had just had. Sometimes dreams of the future carried him into the distance. Often my heart sank at the thought of my distant home, where I had not been for a long time.
The guide leads visitors to a stand on which is a portrait of a handsome young officer, his awards, a college diploma and this checkered piece of paper with mysterious, mystical lines.
"My dear mom and dad!
My dear ones, don't worry. I'm fine. Everything is fine, as usual. How I want to see you! Hug and kiss tightly. To curl up, as in childhood, under your arm, to fall asleep on your shoulder, dad, hiding from all these hardships, vanity, from these vile troubles. I want to hide under a warm cotton blanket, laid out by your gentle hand, dear mother.
I want to hide from them. And they get it, they get it, damn it!”
This is such a short message, begun with nostalgic tenderness, and in the last uneven lines it breaks into a desperate cry. This time Oleg wrote it in Russian, but the last word still came out in Ukrainian...
This short life, only twenty-four years old, is a bitter, tragic symbol of troubled times. A Ukrainian lad, who served near Moscow in the allied internal troops, was struck down by a vile bullet in a bloody duel between tribes fighting for Karabakh.
They got him, the damned, on his last Holy Resurrection...
Boris KARPOV
On September 17, 1991, Gorbachev, who is directly related to the outbreak of the Karabakh conflict, awarded him the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He appropriated it, alas, posthumously. This was the last decree on awarding the Hero of the Soviet Union. After him, no one else was awarded this title.
Oleg Babak turned out to be the only one who received this title in the ranks of the Internal Troops after the Great Patriotic War, and the only Hero of the Soviet Union who was awarded this title when resolving interethnic conflicts. We are talking about the Karabakh conflict...
Oleg Babak served in the Sofrinsky Brigade of the Internal Troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs as deputy company commander for political affairs. During a year and a half of officer service, he spent 385 days in hot spots. He was sent to Vilnius, Yerevan, Baku, Sumgait... He was awarded the medal "For excellent service in protecting public order."
His life was cut short in the village of Yukhari Dzhibikli, Gubadli region of Azerbaijan, and it happened on April 7, 1991.
As it later became known (many Soviet media wrote about this), the unit where Oleg served received a request for help from local residents. Five people, led by Lieutenant Babak, got into the ambulance. The latter, it should be noted, was very loved by the local Azerbaijani residents. They loved him for his fairness, for his understanding of the situation, for his desire to always fight for truth, honor and conscience. Babak was even affectionately called “Babek” behind his back.
So on that ill-fated day, without a moment’s hesitation after receiving a request from local residents, Oleg ordered everyone to quickly get ready. According to his colleagues, he believed until the last that the Armenians would not be able to violate the most holy commandment “Thou shalt not kill” on Easter Sunday. But, Oleg, alas, even after long months of service, apparently, he still had little knowledge of the customs, orders and principles of the Dashnaks...
Oleg, his comrades and several civilians came under fire from Armenian militants. The lieutenant was not taken aback. He ordered everyone to retreat, only asking them to leave him some ammunition. “Leave the cartridges to me, and retreat yourself!”
This was the lieutenant's last order. After some time, the militants, among whom, as it later became known, were mercenaries, surrounded the young officer. 80 militants were never able to cope with him in battle. They killed the Soviet officer like a jackal, with a shot in the back.
It became known later that during the firefight, the militants suggested that Babak and his comrades leave on their own, leaving on the battlefield only an Azerbaijani policeman, wounded but continuing to shoot back, and Azerbaijani civilians. But Babak, naturally, did not even consider this option. Having ordered his colleagues to retreat along with civilians, he single-handedly decided to cover them and took the entire blow upon himself.
He could not give up, exchange or abandon these people, whose protection he considered the highest justice in this war unleashed by the devils of perestroika. From the letters that Babak sent home, it became known that he spoke very warmly about the local residents, and was literally in love with the Azerbaijani nature, the land...
He alone fought an equal battle with 80 militants. He fought until the last bullet... Lieutenant Babak lay without a bulletproof vest, without a machine gun. Having failed to defeat the officer in battle, he, unarmed, was meanly killed when he rose to his full height to stop the bloodshed.
He had one month left to serve in Nagorno-Karabakh. In May I was planning to return to my native village and have a wedding...
By Decree of the President of the USSR No. UP-2574 of September 17, 1991, for courage, heroism and selfless actions shown in the performance of military duty, Lieutenant Oleg Yakovlevich Babak was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously). His family was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. Awarded the Order of Lenin (posthumously).
By order of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, he was forever included in the lists of personnel of the 21st Sofrinsky Special Purpose Brigade.
In October 2010, in the urban settlement of Ashukino (Moscow region), on the initiative of the rector of the temples of the Passionate Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Artemovo, the Savior Not Made by Hands in the Muranovo Museum-Estate named after F.I. Tyutchev and the Alexander Nevsky Church, Abbot Feofan (Zamesov) on With funds collected by residents of the parishes and military personnel of the brigade, a monument to the hero was erected near the railway platform.
In June 2012, at a meeting of the Council of Deputies of the urban settlement of Ashukino, it was decided to name a new street after the Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant Oleg Babak. In 2013, the military-historical club “Patriot” of secondary school No. 2 in the village of Sofrino was named after him.
Eight years ago, on November 28, 2010, the great football player and commentator passed away Vladimir Maslachenko. In memory of him, we publish an excerpt from the book of the SE columnist Igor Rabiner, "Spartacus Confessions".
He flew into the studio a minute before the broadcast - as always, with a dazzling smile. He was about to take the stylish silk scarf off his neck, but the presenter, Georgy Cherdantsev, begged: “Vladimir Nikitovich, stay in it!” And that’s all Maslachenko needed. And the episode of the talk show “90 Minutes” turned into a one-man show, from which we all left in an amazing mood. As, in fact, always after communicating with this person.
His participation in that program was not planned. But at 74, the maestro was reliable - and when he, having barely completed the recording of the author’s program “Maslachenko Plus,” was asked to replace the ill Sergei Yuran in the “90 Minutes” studio, he easily agreed to work for another hour and a half. And then on air he made a reservation (I suspect not accidental): “Just on the Maslak Plus program, oh, sorry...” We reveled in Maslachenko, trying in vain to match him.
This was just a month before his death.
Maslachenko had an amazing gift - any joke, remark, and just his appearance to create a good mood among those around him. Seeing him, who never grumbled, never complained about life, or showed any other old man’s tendencies, I wanted to think that it is not age that controls a person, but a person who controls age. How could it be otherwise, if at almost 75 he is skiing, steering a yacht, and working more than even young people could dream of?
I was riding. I was taxiing. Have worked. Incomprehensible...
Already in childhood, Maslachenko, coming into my house through the screen of a black-and-white TV, became a dear person to me. And not because I, a boy, supported Spartak, and Vladimir Nikitovich once defended its goal. And not because, as he put it in our conversation for “Spartak Confessions,” “when I comment on Spartak, my ears stick out no matter where you put them.”
He became family to me, because for Soviet television he had unprecedentedly warm, spontaneous, lively words, intonations, and humor. Maslachenko talked about football not in the Soviet way, but in a human way. It is not for nothing that he is perhaps the only notable football commentator of the Union who has found himself in full demand in modern times. With all his signature, inimitable sayings: “Be kind!”, “What a devil!” and many, many others...
I liked some of his colleagues as a child, I was neutral towards some, and some annoyed me. And I loved only one. The one who was only capable of shouting to the whole country at the moment Yuri Savichev went one-on-one with Taffarel in the final of the Seoul Olympics: “Well, score, I beg you!” Savichev scored. Because SUCH a plea was impossible not to hear.
The history of sports is not only about goals, goalkeeping feats, and victories. These are also such iconic commentary phrases. They stick in your memory almost more than what happened on the field. Because they convey the feelings of millions amazingly.
And he was able to convey these feelings also because he did not betray himself. Maslachenko himself called this incongruity of his “a complex of insubordination.” He could easily, for example, scold Hiddink when everyone praises him, and praise him when everyone scolds him. And not out of a sense of contradiction, but because he saw something of his own in football.
At the age of 17, I, an aspiring correspondent for the weekly Sobesednik, who could only demonstrate a love for football in general and Spartak in particular, was lucky enough to first cross the threshold of his apartment in the majestic Stalinist building on Sokol. Fortunately, the owner of the apartment did not show a hint of arrogance, a look down on him, or a desire to teach. Everyone knew that he loved himself, but this love extended to those around him. Even if they were at least half a century younger.
That’s why young journalists always adored him. He made you fall in love with every phrase that was unlike anyone else. A few days after our first meeting, he endorsed that interview with a completely Maschenkovsky signature: “Checked! No min!” For me, this autograph alone - which, of course, remained in the parental archives - was the highest rating. But then something happened that I couldn’t believe for a long time. As a reward for my work, Maslachenko invited me to spend 90 minutes of the Spartak - CSKA match with him. In the commentary booth at Luzhniki!
If I had not restrained myself then, I’m afraid that twenty years later, when I turned to Vladimir Nikitovich with a request for an interview for a book about Spartak, I would not have been invited to the same apartment on Sokol.
It was September outside. Warm outside and warm in the soul. We talked excitedly for about five hours, and I was convinced that in twenty years he had not aged a minute. A little deaf in one ear? So in 90 he was just as deaf, and in general this is from the time of his famous injury on the eve of the 62 World Cup. But the soul is the same, perky, boyish. And the voice, and the laughter, and the behavior, and the style, and the gusto in the presentation, and the love of life, and the passion to dress beautifully. It’s not for nothing that Nikolai Starostin wrote in his book that once young Spartak players even copied Maslachenko’s gait.
I understand them. That’s why he envied his colleagues from NTV Plus with white envy, who had the happiness of seeing, hearing and being charged with his energy every day.
And in my worst nightmare I could not have dreamed that after the solo concert in a silk scarf in “90 Minutes” we would never see Maslachenko again. On the evening of November 18, the great commentator suffered a severe stroke. Ten days of doctors' struggle for his life were unsuccessful. May you rest in peace, Vladimir Nikitovich. My favorite commentator and dear person...
Perhaps our meeting two months earlier was his last big interview. That day, Maslachenko was preparing to go to the “Pride of Russia” award ceremony, which he told me about with a mixture of pride and self-irony. Then he began his story:
More than 60 years have passed since that moment, but I remember it clearly to this day. One day I fell asleep in the gym of the Spartak stadium in Krivoy Rog, where I spent days and nights. And my mother found me there at two in the morning. They searched all over the city, and I slept serenely on the mats.
Since that very long time this word has settled in my heart - “Spartak”. By nature I am monogamous. If my wife and I have been together for 52 years, and this is a harmful “production”, then a year can be considered two years ( laughs contagiously)... It’s the same story with the club. Once I got to Spartak Moscow, I never hung around the teams again, although there were countless opportunities.
Near the village in Krivoy Rog where I lived, there was the Stroitel stadium, and to Spartak you had to take a tram. But there were expanses of water that were most interesting for the boy - one river, another, and between them some kind of flooded mine, the depth of which no one even knew. Before and after training, my friends and I endlessly jumped into the water from steep banks, from rocky areas 10-15 meters high. The flights were so breathtaking.
In general, I loved this place - and I loved the name "Spartak". Then, after the war, the era of the great Dynamo and CDKA began. And when they asked you who you supported, they added: “For CDKA or for Dynamo?” And I answered: “For Spartak” - and they looked at me as if I had fallen from the moon.
And I didn’t even know what Spartak Moscow was! We only had a radio there, Vadim Sinyavsky. But I grew up at the Spartak stadium and learned that you can only root for it. And my first team, naturally, was Spartak Krivoy Rog.
Then there was Dnepropetrovsk Metallurg. And from there I could go straight to Spartak. Then my career would probably be limited to only two clubs. And it was like that. In 1954, Metallurg unexpectedly reached the semi-finals of the USSR Cup. I, 18 years old, played in the main team all the games from the 1/128 finals. And before the semi-final, which took place in the fall in Moscow, we were accommodated not just anywhere, but in Tarasovka! Just not where Spartak lived - in a wooden hotel, but on the other side, where there were Finnish houses.
It was very cold there, we slept on one mattress and covered ourselves with another. We trained on the same field as Spartak, right after it. Even though it was raining, two thirds of the Spartak team remained at the field - they were curious about these unknown people from Dnepropetrovsk who broke into the top four teams of the Cup. In those days, great importance was attached to this tournament.
And already then, during training, I was flying and diving. I don’t know if they paid attention to me at that moment, but at the end of ’55, at the traditional post-season meeting of coaches and team managers, Nikolai Starostin told people close to him that he was going to invite me to Spartak.
This was heard by Nikolai Morozov, who in 1966 would lead the USSR national team to its highest achievement at the World Championships - 4th place. And he was just invited to Dnepropetrovsk by agreement for a year, because our coach died. He approached Nikolai Petrovich and said that he would watch me at Metallurg, work, and then return to Moscow and hand it over to them.
But it turned out differently. Returning from Dnepropetrovsk, Morozov became the head of the Lokomotiv team. And together with Boris Arkadyev, who headed Lokomotiv, they quickly dragged me there. I didn’t know about Spartak’s interest, but I had a stack of telegrams from other cities - Kyiv, Donetsk, Chisinau.
And Arkadyev is a block. See (points to the nightstand near the bed. - Note I.R.): one of my two reference books is his “Game Tactics”. He was ahead of his time not by years, but by decades. Many years later, the author of total football, Ajax coach Stefan Kovacs, told me: “Total football was actually invented by you. It’s just that in Ajax I found the players to implement it. And I went to school in the Soviet Union with Mikhail Tovarovsky based on the book by Boris Arkadyev "Game Tactics"
I honestly worked for Lokomotiv for five years, won the USSR Cup with them (by the way, in the final of 1957 we beat Spartak - 1:0), and silver medals in the championship. From there he joined the national team, where he was the second goalkeeper after Lev Yashin at the 1958 World Championships in Sweden. This time was not lost at all for me, and I am grateful to Lokomotiv.
But my beloved “Spartak” could not leave me anywhere.
In the national team, we regularly met with Spartak players. And they were preparing for the World Championship in Tarasovka. So the “Spartachi”, as everyone called them, began to call me to their place. Tolya Maslenkin was especially zealous.
Then, during preparations for Sweden, my first match took place as part of Spartak. The main team of the national team with Lev Yashin in goal, Streltsov (at that moment the accident had not yet occurred), Ivanov, Ilyin, Netto and other stars played against Spartak. Considering that the entire national team then consisted entirely of “Spartak” players, the so-called “Spartak” was actually a double team. He was strengthened by several players from other teams, including me. The most famous of my partners was Alexey Paramonov. And we “pulled” them! After that game, Paramonov, the Melbourne Olympic champion, came up to me and asked if I wanted to join Spartak.
Such things sank into my soul. Constantly communicating with Spartak players in the first and youth teams, I became more and more imbued with the thought: I like this more and more. Although we were very friendly at Lokomotiv, fate dictated something else to me, and I felt it. “Spartak” is here (points to the heart. - Note I.R.) was there all the time.
I did not miss a single Spartak game - naturally, when they did not coincide with Lokomotiv matches. We all had tickets for participants in the USSR Championship, which gave us the right to enter any stadium in the country. These are great tickets, I still have them. So, as soon as possible, I attended Spartak matches.
And so in 1959, Spartak decided to take me with them on a tour of South America.
There were no such trips at Lokomotiv, and if they did arise, they were not interesting to me. And here is South America! I really wanted to play against these people and immerse myself in the atmosphere of these countries and stadiums. We have already been invited to the Spartak office to register for the trip. And suddenly bam - Lokomotiv has a tour to Bulgaria. As luck would have it!
I turned to Morozov and asked permission to go with Spartak. But he, who by that time had already replaced Arkadyev as head coach, did not allow it. I had to go to Bulgaria. You understand my feelings. And when we returned, I immediately submitted my resignation. It will come back to haunt me one day: Morozov harbored a terrible grudge for that demarche, and in ’66 he did not take me to the World Championships.
Then, in 1959, I was not allowed to transfer because the Minister of Railways, Beshchev, who was friends with Brezhnev, who was gaining influence, intervened. I’ll tell you how this happened a little later. I had to play at Lokomotiv before the middle of ’62.
I became close to Spartak people, the closest of whom in spirit turned out to be Sergei Sergeevich Salnikov. We especially became friends in 1962 after the World Cup, when I was recovering from a terrible injury. We were united by the fact that, despite Soviet times, he and I had, as I put it, a complex of insubordination.
One day he became banned from traveling abroad because of this, and even earlier this fate almost befell me. In the circle of football players, I talked about the outrages that are happening in our agriculture - fortunately, from the times spent in Krivoy Rog and Dnepropetrovsk, I knew this topic well. I was summoned to the CPSU Central Committee. There was such an instructor there - Molchanov, so he “had” me for two and a half hours, and I still argued with him. He said: they say, I already know everything he says - I passed political economy with an "A" at the institute. But I also know how things really are, since I have visited all the collective farms in the Dnepropetrovsk region.
They could have blocked my travels, but the first and youth teams at that moment went to play in Poland, and there was no one to play in the youth team except me. One of the leaders of the federation, Vladimir Moshkarkin, found arguments for me to be released. On the day of the match, a government IL-14 plane was flown directly to Lodz and taken from the airport to the game. We won - 1:0, and I also saved a penalty. After which the “restriction to travel” threat was lifted. Nevertheless, I was a kind of dissident person, and this complex of insubordination still sits in me. And it will never fade in life.
I am telling all this in order to paint a complete picture of my spiritual penetration into this completely inexplicable formation called “Spartak”. What is it about him that attracted millions of people? I was lucky in that it was not only by football standards, but by the highest standards an intellectual sports team. The intelligentsia considered it chic to root for Spartak.
This was also considered a certain element of hidden dissidence. Because “Spartak” was created in defiance of the Dynamo movement, which people associated with, you know, who and what. Maxim Gorky, having proclaimed: “Dynamo is a force in motion,” played a little along with a certain audience, and this was annoying.
Growing up, I set out to understand the Spartak phenomenon. But the only football people I talked about this with was Salnikov, who was prone to philosophizing and analytics - but with the obligatory presence of humor. And so, no matter where you turned, everything revolved around the Starostins. No, even around one of them - Nikolai Petrovich. God, Buddha, something completely unearthly.
And I was terribly interested in this - what kind of phenomenon is this? Why was it that not a single drink, not to mention tea party, was complete without jokes, stories that this man gave birth to almost every day and they immediately became textbook ones? Nikolai Petrovich himself only drank tea.
And here we return to 1959 - the same year when I made my first attempt to move to Spartak. The Spartak guys, with whom I closely communicated, put up pressure in the good sense of the word - including on Starostin. They told him that Volodya wanted to transfer. And I had my very first conversation with him on this topic. It took place in the old Spartak, as they say now, office. And that “office” was located in a defunct church somewhere on Spartakovskaya Street. Starostin and Salnikov, who had recently completed his playing career, were sitting in a small room.
Nikolai Petrovich asked me a question directly: “Why do you want to go to Spartak?” He always worried about the purity of Spartak’s ideas and was very jealous of this. For him, of course, a Spartak man, figuratively speaking, from the period of embryonic development, is what is needed. Although Salnikov, for example, was not one. And Starostin was not averse to inviting someone from other teams - but only if the person clearly met his concepts of a real Spartak player. That's why this question was asked.
And “Spartak” at that moment played not just poorly, but very poorly. In the country, the famous movement of Valentina Gaganova thundered - a leader in production, who went to the lagging brigade in order to raise it and make it shock workers of socialist labor. I was a man with a sharp tongue, and I answered Starostin that I probably wanted to go to Spartak according to Gaganova’s principle - to raise a lagging brigade.
“Chapai” (they began to call him that after he himself once said: “Chapai thinks!”) frowned. Quacked. In principle, he could have kicked me out for this joke, and in some ways he would have been right - the tone of my answer did not correspond to the seriousness of the question. And I answered like that because the question offended me a little. I came myself, here I am! The subtext of the question sounded: “Why are you wandering around here, what do you want from us?” Despite the fact that the team is, excuse me, in the ass. And I answered like this, I was in trouble.
The situation was saved by Salnikov, who burst into laughter until he lost his pulse at my answer. So much so that I almost fell out of my chair. Starostin came to his senses from my impudence and attacked Seryoga: “Why are you laughing here?!” And he wipes away tears of laughter. Then he recalled: “Vladimir (that’s what he always called me)! Well, you gave him away!” He was a spontaneous guy, a poet at heart.
Then Starostin tried to start a conversation about the conditions, but I said that first we needed to get permission to cross. We shook hands and went our separate ways. In general, Nikolai Petrovich forgave me for this liberty, but he probably made a mark in my memory.
And soon my question about the transition was considered in the House of Unions. They didn’t let me into the hall; I was staggering outside the door. He was dressed impeccably: an expensive dark blue suit, white shirt, matching tie, moccasins. I loved this business terribly - I had two dozen shirts, if not more, and 48 ties.
Finally, they let me into the hall. Everyone stares at me. And then Federation President Valentin Granatkin asks Starostin: “Nikolai Petrovich, please tell me, do you really need Maslachenko?”
And Starostin replies: “Well, if you allow it, we will take it, we will not refuse.” That is, he did not insist, did not demand, but - if you allow it! Well, I think it's good. From this day on, Nikolai Petrovich, I give you my word that I will still join your team.
The tone of Starostin's phrase caused confusion among everyone. They expected something different. Nikolai Petrovich did not show any readiness to fight. Like, if you give it, we’ll take it, but if you don’t, then we don’t need it. Whether this was related to my answer in church - I don’t know.
Well, the transition was not given, of course. They asked me to leave, then they returned me to the hall and announced the verdict: “We won’t allow you to cross! Do you have anything to say?” I answered: “First. This meeting - and I look around the room - is being conducted in an extremely undemocratic manner! Therefore, I do not agree with your decision.” They only told me: “Go home.” I said again that I did not agree and left.
And suddenly Morozov, who was at the meeting, catches up with me. He says: “Listen, okay, that’s enough! What do you want?” - “So, Nikolai Petrovich (he was also Nikolai Petrovich), I don’t stop there, and I’ll still think about what to do next.” - “Perhaps you are not satisfied with some conditions?”
Here I will make a small lyrical digression. I’ll tell you from my own example the conditions in which the football players lived then.
Having moved from Krivoy Rog to Dnepropetrovsk, I first lived at the stadium, in a room with 17 beds, where it was freezing cold. It was there that I learned to sleep on one mattress and cover myself with the other. Then they gave me some room where a goat was bleating behind the wall. And finally, they provided me with a room directly opposite the regional party committee, where Vladimir Shcherbitsky, who loved me very much, sat.
The trouble was that there was a crack running through this house, and it ran right through the room in which they put me. Through this crack I saw the regional party committee. I went to the stadium, asked the caretaker, he gave me old discarded T-shirts and shorts. I used them to plug this hole from the ceiling to the floor.
In Moscow, having transferred to Lokomotiv, he settled in a hostel near the Belorussky railway station. Without getting out of bed, I could get everything I needed from the closet and get dressed. The main task was not to fall out of the window, since it was almost at floor level. But, thank God, it was low, and when you pressed your forehead against the wall, you could understand that you were not going through the door. Every third week, a man lived in this dorm and snored so loudly that you could hear it three rooms away.
Then they gave me a room in a communal apartment on Taganka, at the Abelmanovskaya outpost, which I called appendicitis. It was not yet customary to knock down doors back then; you heard your neighbors, and they heard you. And by that time I had married Olga, the daughter of a major Soviet builder. And so, after her luxurious conditions, she settles in this kennel. How I survived it, I don’t know.
That’s where I was living when I was forbidden to move to Spartak, and Morozov asked about the conditions. Okay, I think: if you don’t allow the transition, then at least make sure that he lives normally. But only two years later they gave me an apartment on the second floor above the bakery.
Nice apartment, spacious. True, such cockroaches came running in hordes from the bakery. And in 1962, when I finally decided to move to Spartak, this is what happened. The then coach of Lokomotiv Kostylev knew that I would leave under any circumstances, but he asked me to help the railway workers and go with them to Kyiv. I didn’t want to play for the “base”; I would have jeopardized my transition. And he agreed for a double - some kind of practice was needed. As a result, the main team lost after the first half - 0:3, and the coach begged me to come out for the second half. They couldn't score on us again. And at the match there was Shcherbitsky, whom we knew from Dnepropetrovsk.
After the match we boarded the train, but they insistently asked me to stay. I refused. The staff was not sent for 50 minutes - this was unheard of. A minute of delay is a scandal - and then it’s almost an hour!
The head of the train arrived. “Vladimir, firstly, the passengers are terribly nervous. Secondly, how can I make up for this time? In Moscow, people will come to greet you, but it’s winter outside. What, will they wait?” In general, I had to stay and spend the night with my friend, Dynamo Kyiv forward Vitya Kanevsky. They organized a small Sabantui party there.
The next morning I am met by the deputy. Chairman of the Sports Committee of Ukraine. Meets with keys. And he’s lucky to look at an apartment in the house of the Council of Ministers of the Republic. Four rooms, stucco, garage. We enter the first room and I say: “Great, here you can put two table tennis tables and play two games at the same time.”
They give me the key - I don't take it. Because I firmly decided for myself: no matter what they offer, I will not move. Although my wife was pregnant at that moment. Then the chairman of the sports committee and his deputy went out somewhere - apparently to make a phone call. They returned and said: “You will immediately be awarded the rank of police captain - with all the things that come with it.” That is, I was assigned to the republican canteen - at prices and quality, like in the Kremlin. And also to the supply base for food, clothing and industrial goods.
Then they added: “We heard that you wanted to buy a car.” I replied that I didn’t have money for it. This, they say, does not matter: the car will be sold to me at the old price. But there really was enough money for the old one. They asked what color car I wanted. And they promised: “If you give us your passport, we’ll bring you in immediately. And we’ll immediately fill out your application and you’ll play for Dynamo Kiev.” Finally, they tripled the official departmental salary - 200 rubles. And in Spartak I had 160, for the title of master of sports they awarded another 10, and for the title of meritorious - 20.
But I refused all this. Because he left for Spartak for ideological reasons. I loved this team. I say again: after Starostin did not insist on my transition in 1959, he said to himself: “I’ll prove it to them anyway!” And he proved it.
In '62 I was supposed to play at the World Championships in Chile. But a week before the start, during a test match with Costa Rica, an opponent kicked me with a severe fracture of my jaw. The best surgeon in the country performed my operation. And in those eight days that I was in the hospital, I probably visited half the country. Entire districts delegated people who brought a bag of, for example, green coffee. We drove six hundred kilometers or more. During those days I began to speak Spanish quite well. I learned the words from a phrasebook, but there was nothing to do.
Nobody believed that I would return. The professor who performed the operation said that there may be psychological problems, as well as complications related to hearing.
By that time I had made the final decision to move to Spartak. The transition was not given for three months. I turned to the Lokomotiv guys with whom I was friends - they were all at my wedding in our current apartment: understand me! They understood, and 37-year-old Viktor Voroshilov gave his blessing. He, a great player, had never been a champion of the Union and said: “At least you will become one.”
I was already living at the training camp in Tarasovka, although this was officially forbidden to me. The team then played well, but the goalkeeper's position was still a concern. During training, I think everyone, including Chapai, realized that the team needed Maslak. In addition, he traveled independently to the Moscow region and ran cross-country. He developed for himself a completely wild training program based on athletics, from which current goalkeepers would die. But for me it was a drug. Moreover, I had to return to football after the injury due to which I lost the World Cup.
Nevertheless, I was not allowed to play for a long time. Finally, before the game with Shakhtar, Starostin arrived with good news - and I went out onto the field. But the management tried so hard to hush up this event that they did not even announce the team lineups before the starting whistle.
The game began, and there was deathly silence in the 80,000-fill Luzhniki stands. And then they call my name - and a flurry of applause. At that moment I realized that it was not in vain that I was playing football. And that the dream has come true: I am in the Spartak uniform. Now - until the end of my career.
At that moment we began a sharp spurt - and became champions of the Union. Of the 12 remaining games, they didn’t lose a single one. And I, inspired by the move to Spartak, simply flew in my frame.
In Chisinau, I remember, four of us lived with Netto, Maslenkin and Soldatov in a room where in a normal “dimension” one person should have lived. There was a closet opposite my bed by the door - and when I went to bed, I looked at it and thought: will it fall or not? But neither the cabinet nor the Spartak fell. We won in Chisinau, then we gave seven grand to Rostov with all his Mondays, Kopayevs and other respected masters. And finally we arrived in Kyiv.
And there, in the decisive match, we won - 2:0. And they hit me in the ass with a slingshot from the stands. In response, I defiantly turned around, clapped and only scratched my soft spot, making it clear: you guys won’t be able to throw me off balance!
Everyone ran into the locker room happy and excited, but there was no time to celebrate. Immediately take a shower and change clothes, because in exactly 30 minutes the train was leaving for Moscow. We were always in a hurry and always made it. At the exit from the tribune premises there was a police car, which, dispersing everyone, was dragging this bus. There was a train on the first platform, we jumped on it and went home.
Dynamo Moscow came second in that championship. And its leading player Valera Maslov, many years later sharing his memories of that time, said: “We were stronger, but then Volodya Maslachenko won the championship for Spartak, and there is no need to break spears!”
I don’t know if this is actually true, but it probably says something about my role in the end of the championship. And Starostin then, in the locker room after the game in Kyiv, quietly told me only one phrase: “You brought us happiness.” And he walked away. He didn’t say a word more about my contribution to that gold.
But when we were awarded gold medals at the Luzhniki Sports Palace, I, by and large, received my award illegally. After all, due to the fact that I was bullied about the transition, I did not reach 50 percent of the games that season in four matches.
I won the USSR Cup three times - once with Lokomotiv and twice with Spartak. In 1965, we beat Dynamo Minsk in two matches: first we tied the game and won in a replay. And there was a wonderful story there.
In the first meeting with the Minsk team there was a draw - 1:1. They beat us in the legs so much that there was no one to bet on for the second match. We went to Tarasovka, not knowing what to do - all our strength was spent, there were a lot of injured people, there was a replay tomorrow, but there was nothing to run with. And then I remembered that cyclists at races use a mixture of oatmeal, sugar and glucose, which “encourages” the body.
We returned to Tarasovka, looking at the night. And it must happen that we stop at a store, and there is no oatmeal there. And the next morning we arrive - no, either. Somewhere - God knows where - they finally bought it. They cooked porridge for us. We ate it, and the team was attacked by this “Henry of Dristun”!
The most surprising thing is that for me personally, this is the case of the proposer - everything is in order. And almost the entire team, already broken, is incompetent. There were no people in the center of defense, for example. We are transferring Vaidotas Žitkus, who has never played there, to the right side, making some other changes - in short, we have distorted everything we could. And in the end, sorry, crap, we still won the second match!
A year earlier, in 1964, the famous story happened, how Nikita Simonyan almost expelled Igor Netto from the team. It was with me. “Torpedo” gave us a whole “wallet” in that match, and all because we didn’t figure out how to take care of Valentin Ivanov. The scene was like this. During the break, Nikita began to say some words - not so much related to tactical moments, but emotional ones.
And 35-year-old Igor was completely upset. He always had the right to speak, because if, as an organizer, Starostin is Spartak, then as a player, Netto is Spartak. And he said to the head coach, with whom he played together for many years: “Nikita, that’s not what you’re talking about!”
Simonyan, in his temper, could not control himself even in the presence of Chapai. And he replied: “Be silent at all! And you won’t come out for the second half.” Thank God, then the situation returned to normal. There was a meeting at which I also had the chance to speak. But I was not talking about Netto, but about myself. He engaged in self-criticism and said: “Naturally, the goalkeeper must ask himself: where was he when they scored five times?” And Netto, naturally, remained on the team - it seems that the matter was limited to a reprimand.
I'm proud to have been on the field with both of them. I was incredibly lucky: as a Lokomotiv player, I played against Simonyan, and he even scored against me at Luzhniki; played with him in the USSR national team and, in addition, worked under his coaching. We have a lot in common.
By the way, according to the “player plus coach” system, Simonyan is second after Lobanovsky in the number of titles he has won. I can’t say that he delved deeply into tactical research, the nuances of physical training, and so on. Nikita Palych, along with a subtle instinct and understanding of football, had great human authority. And this is very important.
When you have stars on your team, you need to somehow find a common language with them. Simonyan knew how to do this like few others. A man went straight from the football field to the coaching bench - and Netto, the captain with whom he had just played, became his ward! It's actually a very difficult psychological situation. However, the team played and became champions. And it’s Nikita’s credit that, being a great football player, he had the intelligence to become a diligent student on the coaching path. Simonyan has always been a wise man and remains so.
As for the story of my departure from Spartak, which I will tell later, Simonyan had nothing to do with it, Chapai played the role there. That’s why Nikita and I have a perfect relationship to this day.
And Netto for me is the greatest player in the history of Spartak, in all positions and parameters. True, in terms of individual skill, I put Fedor Cherenkov in first place among Spartak players of all times. Genius with a capital G, never fully understood. The phenomenon of movement. It's something innate.
In terms of purely football qualities, Cherenkov is not even Streltsov, he is Pele. Edik is simpler, although ingeniously simpler. From the point of view of possession of the ball, understanding of the game, and ability to solve an episode, Cherenkov had no equal. We must not forget Salnikov, Isaev, but there was no one else like Fedor.
If we return to Netto, he was a man of absolute honesty, decency, and professionalism. From the point of view of professionalism, I would generally put him in first place in our football of those times. Or maybe even the entire Soviet era.
By the way, Igor played chess well. Like Galimzyan Khusainov. When Gilya beat Lobanovsky, he was angry as the devil, throwing pieces, swearing: “B..., I’m losing to some Tatar, meter with a cap.”
Why didn't Netto become a great coach? Maybe he was too brilliant a player for the job. Although he trained in different countries - in Iran, Cyprus, Greece, where, by the way, I recommended him to Panionis. Then he was out of work.
His wife, actress Olga Yakovleva, defrauded him and took all the money he had earned in his life. It was a great misfortune when Igor married her. Therefore, in the last years of his life, the seriously ill Netto was very ill...
When I moved to Spartak - and then too - the name Netto was sacred to me. I remember we were walking right after I walked with Starostin up Pushkinskaya Street, and he asked: “We will solve the issue with the apartment. What additional salary should I give you?”
I said: “Does Igor Netto receive an additional salary?” Chapai looked at me: “Honestly?” - "How else?" - "No". - “How can I receive this salary if Netto doesn’t receive it from you?”
They agreed that they would look for a car from a consignment store for me, since I didn’t have money for a new one. Starostin looked at me carefully: “Yes, I’ll do this for you in no time!” And I bought a used car at a second-hand store, which was driven by a great Young Guard woman named Borts. And despite the fact that she was a racer, I drove that Volga-21 for 12 years. Can you imagine what kind of cars I would have in Kyiv?! But I don't regret anything.
In 1966, already being an absolutely Spartak person, I often communicated with Starostin. By that time I really wanted to understand his phenomenon. We were once in France, and I asked: “Nikolai Petrovich, please tell me, will we ever reach in material terms the level that I see here in Paris?”
Chapai looked around, realized that there were no extra ears and replied: “I’m afraid that your grandchildren won’t live to see this either.”
He was very well aware of the reality of what was happening around him, and was not ideologically blind at all. He knew history and literature brilliantly. We drove from Paris to Lille, and he almost recited “The Year 93” by Victor Hugo to me. After which I asked him why “Spartak” was called “Spartak”. He replied:
You understand, the story that someone had forgotten Giovagnoli’s book “Spartak” was lying on the table, I glanced at it and realized what the team would be called - this is a beautiful invention. We named it so in honor of the opposition youth movement of Ernst Thälmann in Germany, which was also called “Spartak”. This contained a hidden counter-Dynamo idea, but no one should have understood this - otherwise the name would not have passed under any circumstances. Hence the romantic fiction about Giovagnoli.
This is what Starostin told me in the train compartment. And I, feeling that he was drawn to revelations, asked another question: “What was the reason that your family was subjected to repression?” Nikolai Petrovich grew gloomy: “All sorts of things happened.” - “But what is the main reason - political, economic?”
He looked out the window and chuckled. He said that the Starostin brothers were blamed for the disappearance of some food train that was traveling from Poland. This was the official version of the authorities. In fact, according to Nikolai Petrovich, the fact was that in the mid-30s he was in very close contact with the Komsomol leader Alexander Kosarev. It was with him that they developed the plan for the first championship of the Soviet Union, and Kosarev, a friend and curator of Spartak, “pushed” this project to a higher level.
And then, when Kosarev was repressed and shot, “relations with the enemy of the people” were remembered both by him and his brothers and sisters. Starostin told me about this calmly, because by that time Kosarev had already been rehabilitated.
At that moment, Nikolai Petrovich was actively working on his book “Stars of Big Football,” and then a third version appeared - that it was all because of the famous director Meyerhold. The starostins were very big theatergoers and were close friends with him, and after Meyerhold was repressed, they went like hell. Then I gave up, unable to digest all this number of versions.
After some time, I met a guy, a colonel, and our wives began to communicate. The wife of a new acquaintance turned out to be a super intelligence officer, and he himself was not easy - he was the deputy director of the Moscow Film Festival, supervised literature and journalism. One day I came to see him and a company had gathered. The table was “led” by a man who turned out to be a big shot at Lubyanka. And somehow the conversation turned to Starostin. And this same man, who had previously sat imposingly at the head of the table, suddenly changed his face and said about Nikolai Petrovich: “Criminal, b...!”
After which the conversation on this topic immediately stopped. Either there they knew more, or Chapai had just annoyed the Dynamo department... I didn’t want to touch on this topic anymore. But this did not make Starostin’s mystery any less intriguing.
In the mid-60s, a certain Nikolai Ivanovich Eliseev appeared in the management of sports affairs of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions. Spartak’s people soon began to call him and his associates “black colonels.” And “Spartak” was then included in the system of trade union sports. But “Torpedo” was dear to the trade unions - especially considering the attitude that the working class should set the tone in everything. That is, the car manufacturers were supposed to be the undisputed flagship of the trade union sports movement.
But for this it was necessary to do something with Spartak. And in 1965, taking advantage of the 8th place in the championship (although the team won the Cup that year), Eliseev and Co. removed both Starostin and Simonyan.
Nikolai Gulyaev was appointed instead of Simonyan. We made this decision, but asked that Starostin be returned, since this tandem worked successfully in the 50s. They instructed Gulyaev to repeat at all levels: Nikolai Petrovich is needed!
Gulyaev was an extremely decent person. He never did or could do anything behind the backs of Starostin and the players. But this was the only case when he did not go with the team to the end. And I have no doubt that I later regretted it greatly. Apparently, having just been newly appointed, his hands were absolutely tied. And in the end, a normal guy was appointed head of the team, but he was incredibly far from football and all our affairs. His name was Andrey Sosulnikov.
And Chapai’s influence on the lives and minds of the players was enormous. To the point that they blindly believed in him and everything he did. For all of them, Starostin was their own father; they were madly in love with him. However, why - “were”? Still in love...
We were terribly excited that they did not meet us halfway, and started a war against this Sosulnikov, who, before joining the football team, led winter sports in the central council of Spartak. He tried to win our favor with all sorts of material benefits, especially since - understanding our reaction to what was happening - they met him halfway, threw money at him so that he could distribute it in the team.
It didn't help. We stood our ground and demanded that Starostin be returned to us. I was elected captain of the team and led this movement. I have visited all sorts of authorities! And “on the way” he brought Edik Streltsov back to big football - and maybe not only to Torpedo, but also to the national team.
It was the day of the 1966 World Championship final, which, as you remember, Morozov did not take me to. I went to a reception with the chairman of the USSR Sports Committee, Igor Mashin, where I pushed for Starostin’s return, and at the same time argued for the need to transition our football to a professional level. For three hours we drank tea, watched the final, discussed the refereeing of Tofik Bahramov - and, naturally, we did not agree on anything. Neither according to Starostin, nor in professional football.
From there I went to see the secretary of the Moscow City Council, Pegov. He invited me into his office, and meanwhile he stood up and began collecting some kind of folder. I ask: “How are we doing?” - meaning, naturally, Starostin. He replies: “We are doing well. Better tell me what we should do with Streltsov.” - "In what sense?" - “Should we return him to big-time football?” - “This should have been done yesterday!” - “But you will miss him!” - “I’ll be happy if he scores for me.” Pegov looked at me thoughtfully, holding this folder in his hands, and exclaimed: “Consider that you are the last straw!”
And he ran away somewhere. And I stayed waiting. I sit in the office for about twenty minutes, and finally decide to look out. The office looks at me with these eyes: “Where are you from?” - "I am waiting". - “What are you talking about? He’s already at Grishin’s reception.” It turned out that on that day no one cared about Starostin, because the issue of Streltsov was being resolved. Pegov said that he talked with the captain of Spartak, and even he said: they say, we need to return it. And everything was decided.
But no one returned Starostin to us! And then there was a call from my father-in-law. I emphasize: I didn’t call him myself, because it was inconvenient for me to use his connections. All he had to do was lift a finger, and in ’59 I would have ended up at Spartak. But I preferred to solve all my problems myself.
I am married to the daughter of a very famous person in my circles - the builder of especially important objects, Leonid Yakovlevich Gubanov. After the war, he developed a plan for the rapid restoration of the destroyed Rostselmash, had personal correspondence with Stalin on this subject and received the Stalin Prize. And in Dnepropetrovsk he built the famous rocket plant, because of which this city was closed to foreigners for many years. When he finished his work, he was transferred to Moscow by order of Brezhnev. And he was friends with the Secretary General. By the way, I have a couple of photographs in which my father-in-law quarrels with Khrushchev...
So, Leonid Yakovlevich calls me, having heard about our situation with Starostin. I arrive at the very apartment in which we are talking (Olga and I lived then on Taganka). I'll tell you briefly about the situation. And my father-in-law was an emotional person, he smoked endlessly and died during the match “Torpedo” - “Spartak”, which we lost - 5:1...
After listening to me, Gubanov said: “You can write three or four lines addressed to Brezhnev, no more. It should be signed with three names - yours, Netto and Khusainov. I will convey everything.”
I come to Starostin. He was then sitting in a closet in the Russian council of Spartak - they gave him a place there. Position - head of the football and sports games department of the Russian republican society "Spartak". After my explanations, he took a sheet of paper and wrote in his calligraphic handwriting: “To the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev...” - and further in the text. Then he brought the text printed on very good paper.
I signed first. I called Netto and Khusainov, and Igor and Gilya instantly arrived and also signed. That same evening I took the finished letter to Leonid Yakovlevich at work - to the Ministry of Spetsmontazhstroy on Mayakovka. From there, Baikonur and many other things grew their legs...
The father-in-law said: “Everything is fine.” And soon Starostin was returned to the team. Years have passed. I no longer played for Spartak, but went skiing in the village of Kurovo near Moscow. I look, black cars are approaching, there have never been anything like them there. We stand in line for the lift, and there is such a serious guy there. He sees me, doesn’t approach me very cleverly, and it turns out that this is Brezhnev’s assistant Samoteikin.
He says that it was he who had the opportunity to report to Brezhnev about our appeal regarding the return of Starostin. According to Samoteikin, the general secretary read the paper, took a pen and said matter-of-factly: “The opinion of the team must be respected.” Thus, Chapai was returned.
I was captain for exactly a year. When Starostin returned, he thanked me and asked me not to strain myself, because, in his opinion, a field player should be a captain. Nikolai Petrovich told me that this is a little un-Spartak-like: in the history of the team there has never been a captain-goalkeeper.
Then they appeared - Prokhorov, Dasaev, Cherchesov. But, apparently, he was so accustomed to the fact that the captains were Netto and Khusainov that he perceived the bandage on my arm as some kind of nonsense. In the end, Gilya became the captain, and I myself voted for him with pleasure.
My ambitions were not compromised. Another thing is that I, as a captain, could not complete some of my initiatives. People have forgotten that it was Vladimir Maslachenko who personally convinced the team that they should be the first to enter the football field in unison, stand in the center and greet the audience with a wave of their arms, turning first in one direction and then in the other. And then, after waiting for the opponent, hand him the pennant and Spartak badges.
And we did it. In addition, I insisted that Spartak wear red woolen training suits with white stripes. I also discovered that one Czech company began to produce very high-quality, pure leather, white sneakers with two stripes. And, unlike the old rubberized slippers, each of us was bought such sneakers. Plus, the Spartak diamond was sewn onto the costumes.
This has never happened before! In addition, I insisted that the entire team be dressed in the same civilian uniform - Finnish suits, which were chosen by the guys themselves. We found a store that agreed to sell us this shortage, and according to the size of each player. This was complemented by white shirts and matching ties. But the most amazing thing was that there were three people - I won’t mention their names - who sold these suits. We weren’t offended or even scolded, but these players ruined the whole idea. What can we say, if we won real gold medals at the international tournament in Bologna, we barely dragged a huge cup with Logofet to the hotel, and then several people sold their medals. Collectors bought it, but the criminal investigation department caught them: it was impossible to trade in gold.
In general, in 1967 I stopped being a captain. And I can’t say that this surprised me much. As well as the fact that Starostin and I later separated. A leader, and especially an owner, cannot feel like a debtor. And Nikolai Petrovich felt after that situation.
But let me return to his phenomenon. It was obvious to everyone that Starostin was a great organizer. He should be a minister, managing the country's sports movement! And he holds the seemingly inconspicuous position of head of the Spartak team. Every moment in the bustle, he sends small employees, “sixes” in general, to those in power - and all his requests are fulfilled. He, in fact, has nothing, but he manages everything! Finding an apartment, placing a child in an exemplary kindergarten - all this was a colossal problem, but for him it was a piece of cake. And he loved to do these seemingly small things.
During the period when the process of returning Nikolai Petrovich to Spartak was underway, I visited his house very often. Once I drove him to the Spartak office (and then I went to this issue with the same regularity as to training) and witnessed an amazing picture. Perhaps out of despair that the issue was not being resolved, he suggested that he promote his brother Andrei Petrovich to the post of team leader. And only then he and Nikolai Petrovich will change places.
And this is what Chapai said:
Andrey worships all gods! He got himself some young woman, he drinks with the playwright Isidore Stock, he cut his hair like Gaben, he hangs out with gypsies... And I serve only one god - Spartak and football!
At this moment he opens the car door - and in the words "Spartak" and football "how he gives the door that I almost flew out of the driver's seat! I froze - like in the last scene of "The Inspector General".
And that’s when it hit me. It was then that I understood why Starostin did not need to be either a minister or some other leader of the highest order.
The genius of this man lay in the fact that through his entire life during Soviet times he smuggled private property that was categorically prohibited at that time - the Moscow Spartak. For him, it was, in the language of Father Fyodor from “12 Chairs,” a small candle factory.
In 1964, at a meeting with fans - I even have a photograph of it lying around somewhere - I spoke and said that I dreamed of the time when Spartak would have its own stadium. There was a standing ovation! But Chapai was offended by me: “Why are you minding your own business?”
It turns out that he absolutely loved the fact that he was so influential that he could play at Dynamo or Luzhniki - anywhere at any second. And no one will refuse him. But it didn’t work out with our own stadium.
For everyday matters, I turned to Starostin extremely rarely. I really didn’t want him to think that he owed me something for the situation with his return. And maybe I would never have applied if not for one problem.
Son Valerka, when we lived on Taganka, could not feel comfortable in kindergarten. Either he was sick or something was wrong. We eventually found a good kindergarten on Sokol, but we had to take the child there halfway across the city by public transport. And I asked Starostin to help with the exchange of the apartment.
He asked if I had any trinkets - medals, badges. To look more respectable. He asked us to take them with us and explained that we would go to the head of the department for the distribution of living space in Moscow. We arrive at the department, where he already has an appointment. He sits me on a chair opposite the door, and he enters the office.
I sit for an hour and a half, toiling. And suddenly a short man comes out of that same office, sees me and asks: “Oh, Volodya? Why are you sitting here? Did you come for some reason?” I explained the situation, he was very surprised - and it became clear that Nikolai Petrovich had not even mentioned my topic in an hour and a half. The man said that he was the party organizer of the main department for the distribution of living space and offered to come to him in the evening on Sokol at such and such an address. It turned out that he was moving himself! Now Yulia, my eldest granddaughter, lives there...
In general, I resolved the issue with the exchange without involving Starostin. He was stunned: how is it - past me? In short, this is all I received in my 17 years of football activity. Being an altruist, I received nothing from football, but gave away my own health. And if I had to repeat this path, I would repeat it.
The apartment in which we communicate is not because of football, but because of my wife’s family. I also furnished it myself - I once met the director of a furniture store who was a big football fan. I took him to games several times, and when I needed to buy furniture, I turned to him, and he furnished my entire apartment without charging a single ruble from above. Although at that time Czech and German headsets were sold at exorbitant prices.
In general, after the story of Starostin’s return to Spartak, I began to feel some discomfort in the relationship between us, some tension, artificiality in conversations. I am such an independent and freedom-loving person that this did not bother me at all. But it ended up being Nikolai Petrovich who contributed to the fact that I was forced to leave Spartak and end my playing career.
This happened at the beginning of 1969. And in ’68 we took second place. Yes, I was 32 years old, but I didn’t feel like I was “coming from the market” in the slightest. Moreover, that season we played without two central defenders at all. We simply didn't have them! We had to transform two midfielders into them - Sasha Grebnev and Seryozha Rozhkov.
Thank God, they were very football educated people - they worked the ball perfectly and read the game. But often the lack of experience affected this particular position. I had to work without a break. And they themselves, understanding everything perfectly well, before entering the field, laughed: “Shura (I had a nickname on the team - “Shura Balaganov”), well, will you work there on the way out?” And I absolutely loved the game at the exits. She let me fly.
So, at the beginning of 69, Starostin himself told me: “We invite Anzor Kavazashvili.” I answered: they say, very good, it will be interesting to fight with him, especially since we in Spartak have always had a principle - whoever is stronger plays. And suddenly I heard a phrase that slightly stunned me: “Well, you understand, we promised him that you wouldn’t interfere!” I realized that they were expecting a resignation letter from me. They don’t dare expel me, but they expect me to make my own move.
We went to the last pre-season training camp in Sochi. As always, we stayed at the Leningradskaya Hotel, where all the elite of our football industry gathered. Everyone was terribly surprised that I was training and playing for the reserve team. And I continued to prove it, as if nothing had happened. But neither Starostin nor Simonyan allowed me anywhere near the main team.
Then representatives of different clubs started visiting me. I jokingly said that I could stick my leg out the window with a sign that said, “Who is bigger?” But in the end he refused everyone. I also hoped that I would win my place in Spartak.
My last friendly match was against Torino. We won - 1:0. I started my childhood career with a clean sheet, and everywhere my first matches were clean sheets - in the youth and youth teams, in Lokomotiv, and in Spartak. And he also finished “zero”.
But in the end it became clear to me that I would not come to an agreement with Starostin. The principle “whoever is stronger plays” has apparently been pushed aside until better times. I wasn't even given a chance. The team flew to Iran, and I was no longer part of the delegation.
Having found out when they were flying away, I arrived at the airport. With a statement already written asking to be released of my own free will. Without explaning the reason.
Starostin was sitting on the bus. The team greeted me with friendly cheers, I walked up the steps and gave him my application. And when everyone realized that I was finally leaving, silence reigned around.
And then Starostin took out a pen and, instead of signing this statement right there on the bus, he got out and, not finding anything to lean on, almost got down on all fours, put the paper on the step of the children's theater ticket office and wrote two words: “I don’t mind.” And not a word more.
Then I told myself that we would never have any relationship with this person again. Thank God, I was smart enough, respecting his merits, to be in contact, but nothing more. This departure, of course, left a deep dent in my soul.
I had many offers from different clubs. The most fantastic thing was done from Yerevan, where the team was not yet called “Ararat”, but... “Spartak”. Alexander Ponomarev coached her, came to me with the team administrators and spent two hours persuading her to move there - with conditions, of course, no worse than in Dynamo Kiev. But I said that for me there is only one Spartak - Moscow. And if Starostin didn’t allow me to play for him anymore, then that’s it, I’ll call it a day.
And, there was also an offer from Buryatia - this is generally something out of the ordinary. Almost a personal plane on which I could fly to Moscow and back at any time. Sick people ( laughs)! I don’t understand this, to be honest. For me, the first thing in football has never been money, but always the idea. And I never asked anyone for a certain amount of salary - whatever they gave, that’s what I received.
At that moment, financial problems arose. I took a special French language course. They were separated from “production”, but with the same salary - and I earned a so-called stipend of 130 rubles. And suddenly it turns out that Spartak doesn’t have that kind of money for me. Having learned about this, the sports department of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions intervened and forced Starostin to pay me this scholarship.
I was already sucked into a new life. I’m studying at these courses, I’m going to go to train in Chad, by mutual desire with Nikolai Ozerov I’m starting to try myself as a radio reporter, I play a lot for veterans. Kavazashvili, meanwhile, played great for Spartak in ’69, when the team became the champion of the USSR, and there were no complaints against him at the 1970 World Championships in Mexico...
And suddenly at the end of the 70th year - a call from Nikolai Petrovich. “Serega Salnikov tells me about your exploits for the veterans. Do you want to return to Spartak?” I replied that I had put an end to it, but in ’71 Chapai called again: “Please, come back! Knowing you and your character, everything will be fine.” - “But why do you need me?” - “You know, Anzor has spoiled our Spartak principles for us. There is so much talk about material matters! He is ruining the team, they don’t talk about anything else but money. Look how they play!” - “Well, it’s not about him.” - “You see, you will influence the team differently with your presence.”
I refused, saying: “Nikolai Petrovich, you love Yesenin, right? And he wrote: “You can’t set him on fire.” Starostin replied: “Okay, let’s think further.” And, in my opinion, Sashka Prokhorov appeared. And Anzor went to Kutaisi “Torpedo”, taking with him several Spartak guys. By the way, we have a normal relationship with him. Today we are going together to a ceremony where we will be awarded medals called “Conscience of the Nation.” Oh, how!
1999 Vladimir Maslachenko. Photo by Alexander Fedorov, "SE"
In 1975, Starostin was fired from his job. I'll tell you a secret: I was indirectly responsible for this. At that moment, one of the leaders of the Moscow city council of Spartak became one of the people with whom we were great friends. He and I agreed on our love for alpine skiing; we often skied together when he was not yet a boss.
He knew the story of my departure from Spartak. Having experienced in my life all the delights of the bias of leaders, I became imbued with it. And, having become a leader, he once told me at a meeting: “Volodya, the first thing I will do is fire Starostin.” I was stunned: “Have you gone crazy? How, why? And do you have enough strength?” - “No, I’ll fire him. At least for the fact that he treated you so incorrectly.” - “Maybe you shouldn’t do this? Get it out of your head!” - “You know, I also have character. I want to transform a lot of things in sports, and Spartak is a good starting point. But Starostin is a brake on the process!”
We didn’t return to this topic again, but this conversation stuck in my memory. And he did it. How? Through the same trade unionists who nominated him for this position from the Burevestnik society.
Hand on heart, that thorn lived in my heart for some time. I was discouraged that Starostin removed me from the team without explanation, violating the unshakable Spartak principle: the strongest plays. I was not given the opportunity to fight. If I lost to Anzor in the game, there would be no problem. I am an athlete to such an extent that I am able to say to myself: here I am weaker. But I wasn't even given a chance to prove otherwise. And therefore, when Starostin returned and invited me to participate in the process of rebuilding the team, I immediately said: “no.” I didn’t even pretend that it was a good offer, I’ll think about it. I just refused.
By the way, Krutikov, Khusainov and Varlamov, who then headed Spartak, asked me to become the head of the team, but I refused. The topic of working at Spartak was then finally closed by me; I, as they say, “sprouted” into radio and television, and realized that this was mine.
When Starostin was removed, I confess, for a moment I had this crazy thought: you see, Nikolai Petrovich, how it happens. You have to be responsible for everything in this life. But I suppressed this thought and am proud of it. Because, to summarize, Starostin is “Spartak”, and “Spartak” is Starostin. And if we throw a bridge to today’s version of Spartak’s life, then I give you my word - if the club had started with what has been happening in recent years, it would never have become Spartak!
I think that modern Spartak has nothing to do with the old one. This is a completely new generation that has not even absorbed the ideas and principles that we professed. However, we must not forget that it was a different time then. The kind of Spartak that it was then cannot be recreated today. And today's Spartak cannot live by the same principles as the one of that time.
But let's go back to the end of 76, when Spartak was relegated. Starostin was still formally outside the team, but was actively searching for a new coach. At first it was not about Beskov, but again about Simonyan, but something stopped them there. At that moment, Nikolai Petrovich began to call me often on the phone. And at some point I had a completely crazy idea.
I was very friendly with Alik Petrashevsky, who worked at Dynamo Kiev. This was my pupil, I played a big role in the life of this guy with a difficult fate, who came from the hooligan Dnepropetrovsk district of Chechelovka, but managed not to succumb to the temptations of that life.
More than once I went to commentate on the European Cup matches of the Kiev team, and I remember this moment. We sat in the bathhouse with Lobanovsky, Bazilevich, the massage therapist, and violated the regime a little. We talked, naturally, about football. The conversation turned to Spartak, and suddenly Loban said: “Spartak is a company.” He said it as forcefully as he cut it off.
Once we were talking with Petrashevsky, and he expressed an idea: why not Lobanovsky? I replied that, firstly, it was necessary for him to agree, and secondly, it was necessary to persuade Starostin. And so I call Nikolai Petrovich and say: “What about Lobanovsky?”
Pause. And the answer: “Well, Lobanovsky is unattainable.” - "Why?" - “You understand, you need to think very carefully here. Does he agree?” I blurted out: “I agree.” In short, we agreed to call in another couple of days. And I immediately called Petrashevsky to persuade Loban. And he persuaded! I call Starostin back again and confirm the information that Lobanovsky is ready. Chapai replies that he will give a final answer in two days.
And exactly. He calls and says: “Volodya, listen, you know: I’m afraid that they won’t understand us. The idea is very interesting, but they won’t understand. And then, in my opinion, we have already agreed here. What do you think about Beskov’s candidacy?”
I replied that we also need to think about this. Starostin said: “Okay, think! Chapai thinks too!” That's where we parted. And soon after this conversation Beskov appeared. And Nikolai Petrovich again became the team leader.
I had a very specific relationship with Konstantin Ivanovich. In 1963, he headed the USSR national team. For some reason he didn’t perceive me as a player, although we had never even met before. And he didn’t invite me to view all the collections in Voronezh. But the coaching council put pressure on him, and Beskov reluctantly sent me a challenge. The only thing that connected us was the same tailor. I loved to dress nicely.
It so happened that we were traveling with him to Voronezh in the same compartment. He read “Theatrical Life”, I read Aristotle, whom I suddenly became interested in. Beskov asked what I was reading, and, having received an answer, for some reason he shot me such a look that I sensed something unkind. Maybe he thought I was making fun of him.
In Voronezh, it became clear that Beskov does not need either Maslachenko or Yashin; he is relying on Urushadze and Bauzha. And he’s trying to get back at me for something. He even wanted to organize a Komsomol meeting about my hairstyle - so I went to the hairdresser and cut my hair short.
It all ended with the fact that after training in Luzhniki, when Vasily Trofimov was working with me separately, I went up to Beskov and said: “I’m not a fool and I feel the situation in the team very well. I see that you are not needed now. In Spartak.” "You will always find me. I promise you to train hard and always be in shape." He turned around and left. And then I found out that by leaving, I ruined Beskov’s exemplary event, at which he was going to scold me for something.
When everything was going smoothly with Beskov at Spartak, I asked Starostin: “What about his Dynamo roots?” - “Yes, you know, there are things that probably need to be overcome somehow.” At the same time, he lowered his head and, in thought, fiddled with something in his hands. But the move with Beskov ultimately turned out to be the right one, and the team returned to where it was supposed to be all its life.
Beskov always emphasized that he is a professional coach, and he does not care where he works. Before joining Spartak, he worked for Torpedo, Lokomotiv, CSKA, Dynamo, and the national team. That is, he became an extra-club football figure who was not associated exclusively with Dynamo, where he made a name for himself as a football player. This probably also made the decision to invite him to Spartak easier.
Beskov always worked fruitfully and gave our football a number of players, even when he headed the FSM in Luzhniki. In staging the game, he was superior to everyone, and in the competition for game ideas, I think he was higher than Lobanovsky. From the point of view of the result, Valery Vasilyevich succeeded in everything, but in this production art he was inferior to Beskov. Now I think that Lobanovsky’s ideas would not have taken root in Spartak, while Beskov’s ideas turned out to be just right for him.
But nevertheless, before Spartak, Konstantin Ivanovich did not win a single championship with any team! He began to win, already leading the red and white. And Beskov would not have been Beskov if he had not considered this his personal merit, and not the club’s. The reason for his break with Spartak at the end of ’88 is that at some point he got tired of Starostin. I'm just tired of it.
For Nikolai Petrovich, talking about the composition is like a balm for the soul. He could spend days grinding out the strengths and weaknesses of each player. Even while I was playing, he, Simonyan and others in Tarasovka were getting together and arguing about how to beat Dynamo tomorrow. And the lineup was verbally tailored so that the goalkeeper almost on the left side could play! Well, Chapai simply loved to talk about football, he got a kick out of it.
And Beskov stopped discussing anything with him on this topic. And, apparently, this made Nikolai Petrovich nervous. Every year they grew further apart. And at the end of 1988, Beskov’s categorical demand followed. When he went on vacation, he left Starostin a piece of paper - an extensive list of players he was supposed to kick out, and another list of those invited.
Starostin was rarely seen in anger, but this was exactly the case. He called me at home. The entire floor could hear this conversation because I was standing in the corridor. “How can I fire the guys I trust and whom I brought together? They are my relatives. Well, should I fire them just because Beskov doesn’t like them?!”
He called me already at one o'clock in the morning. At the end of the conversation, he said that he would fire Beskov and hung up. And the next day he called and said that he had fired me. Nikolai Petrovich was democratic in his decisions - he did not immediately make an authoritarian verdict, he carefully thought about and discussed everything. But if he made a decision, it was final and not subject to revision.
He made the same decision regarding the appointment of Romantsev. I think Oleg Ivanovich had no real competitors. Starostin, like his own child, nurtured him and pulled him up - “Krasnaya Presnya”, “Spartak” (Ordzhonikidze) and, finally, “Spartak” Moscow.
But Romantsev, like Beskov, are very different from the same Simonyan and Gulyaev. The latter two, who worked with Spartak for a very long time, never entered into an antagonistic relationship with Starostin. This was a huge plus for both them and Nikolai Petrovich himself: he behaved in such a way that he did not give them such an opportunity. But in the cases with Beskov and then with Romantsev, apparently, he gave them the opportunity to rise to such, from their point of view, heights that they could afford to say: “Get out!” Not directly, of course, but through your actions.
Romantsev was stronger as a coach than as a player. Like any talented person, he has a unique character. But at some stage - and many go through this - Oleg decided that Spartak was him. But I am sure that after Spartak he will not be able to work with any other team. I think he understands this perfectly well and that’s why he doesn’t work. And having tried himself at Dynamo and Saturn, he thereby made grave mistakes.
Because if you grow in soul with Spartak, the alternative becomes simple: either Spartak or nothing. Maybe it was precisely for this reason that I could not imagine myself in any other team.
I think that Romantsev made a very serious mistake by releasing Andrei Tikhonov from Spartak. This is an iconic figure, and in this regard it is not even subject to discussion. The way they treated Andrei is apparently normal in today’s football relations and measurements. But in those that I am used to being guided by, no. Captaincy in Spartak is a separate unit, so important and serious that, once choosing a person and guessing with him, you must take this extremely seriously. With the understanding that this person determines the face of the club. And Tikhonov was the very person who, perhaps more than any coach, personified the Spartak spirit. The same as Netto did in his time.
In 2000, Oleg Ivanovich even invited me, which in itself was unusual, and together with Chervichenko and Shikunov tried to explain the true reason for Andrei’s expulsion. She seemed extremely unconvincing to me. Allegedly, Tikhonov violated the norms of behavior, during the training camp he secretly left the base at the wrong time, and he was - again allegedly - discovered in the casino. I just don’t understand how it’s possible to climb over this tall fence that is now in Tarasovka without anyone noticing his “leaving.” What nonsense!
You see, sometimes captains become such influential and popular people that coaches, willingly or unwillingly, wonder whether this will interfere with their work. In Spartak in particular, and in our football in general, there is no tradition of respect for those who played serious roles in the team. In clubs they are somehow immediately crossed out and forgotten about.
I remember the Champions League final “Real” (Madrid) – “Bayer” (Leverkusen). Bayer brought all the main people in its history to the game and brought them onto the field before the game. And the neutral stadium in Glasgow burst into applause.
When I came to Manchester and arrived at Old Trafford, I saw a sculpture of Matt Busby, the greatest manager of Manchester United. Do we have at least one sculpture of coaches near stadiums? In the tribune room in Manchester, everything is hung with portraits of players who defended the honor of Manchester United, and this says a lot. Once upon a time, I saw the entire Spartak series of awards - cups, certificates, etc. - in the bar of the Arbat entertainment complex. Or remember how the last USSR Cup was kept in Chervichenko’s office, and after the sale of the club, he did not want to give it away for some time. What kind of real “Spartak” can we talk about today if such things happen? Who allowed the situation to get to this point?
In the entire history of Russian Spartak, I have not been to a single award ceremony. They just don't invite me there. Because I take a certain position, voice it, and someone doesn’t like it.
Chervichenko and Fedun are apparently normal, talented people in their own way. But in my ideas about what the activities of Spartak should be, they do not occupy any, even remote, place. They don't make sense to me.
When I started commentating on football on television, it was difficult to escape the special attitude towards Spartak. Moreover, there was something double-edged in this - I could praise everything that related to “Spartak” through the roof, and sometimes some kind of demon would possess me, and I did not forgive some of the smallest technical errors, which could not have been addressed at all. pay attention. In the end, I seem to have found a middle ground, but I still can’t help myself. Although I don’t really accept or understand this “Spartak” today. And I have absolutely no contact with him. I don’t even know where the Spartak office is now. My whole Spartak religion is in the past.
I have a very good attitude towards Valery Karpin. He played great, by the way, and demonstrated football, which I like from an aesthetic point of view. He's a normal nice guy. The only thing I don’t like is that he shows up at matches in torn jeans - that’s my only complaint. You can call it whatever you want - a unique style, a challenge to society, a tribute to fashion. But Karpin must first of all remember that he is the coach of Spartak. And this obliges us to something. “Spartak” is a style that should influence the coach’s style, and not vice versa.
I never found out what kind of coach Stanislav Cherchesov was, because he was not given the opportunity to fully express himself in this incarnation. As for goalkeeping, he was one of the last Mohicans of that very Soviet goalkeeper school, which, in principle, has completely disappeared.
Any goalkeeper, player, coach makes mistakes, and so does the commentator. I had a memorable story in my life when in 1993, in the Spartak-CSKA match, I called Igor Ledyakhov Andrey Gashkin. But behind her external funnyness there is also an element of reflection on what a commentator is, sitting somewhere in the attic behind the dirty window of an unkempt cabin, with old dirty monitors, on which everything looks like blacks fighting in a dark tunnel. But neither the commentator nor the goalkeeper recognized the search for excuses. Once during my playing career it even got to the point that after missing a goal from Kairat, I was so upset that during the break I changed my clothes and left the stadium.
I then had a completely incomprehensible recession. I set myself a training process that was so regulated that there were no sharp declines, but then it started. I remember that I began to fall poorly on the left side. And to restore my technique, I began to use an unusual method: I picked up the ball, they kicked me on goal, and I, with the ball in my hands, flew into the corner and hit one ball with another.
But this did not save me from the incident in the game with Kairat. They shot from afar - and suddenly the ball dived in front of me, I decided to kick it. And he flew between my legs and into the gate. Utter absurdity! I was incredibly upset - and I’m still reproaching myself: how could I drop everything and leave without telling anyone?! But Starostin and Simonyan, it must be said, reacted to this episode with understanding. They knew it was a temporary mental confusion that would have no effect on me. And so it was. And soon I started playing as before.
I remember all these moments in my career as if they were yesterday. Because “Spartak” in my life is a great love in which there could be nothing passable. Every day, every match was the main thing. Yes, now I understand perfectly well: when I comment on Spartak, my ears stick out no matter where you put them. But, in the end, is it really necessary to be ashamed of your love?..