Secrets of the Victory Combat became available to historians
The author of these lines, perhaps one of the few researchers, had a chance to hold in his hands the true personal file of the Hero of the Soviet Union Stepan Andreevich Neustroyev, which was kept in one of the closed archives under the heading "Secret." As a result, intricate details came to light that were not included in the official biography of the legendary Victory Commander. It turned out that he had to take off his epaulettes three times, work as a mechanic at the factory, serve in the administration of camps of prisoners of war and in parts of the internal troops to protect important defense facilities where the country's nuclear shield was forged ..."ACTED EXCLUSIVELY BRAVE ..."
“Captain Neustroyev, during the capture of the Reichstag, acted exceptionally bravely, decisively, showed military valor and heroism. His battalion was the first to burst into the building, entrenched in it and held it for a day ... Under the leadership of Captain Neustroyev, a red flag was hoisted over the Reichstag ... "- these are lines from a genuine award list of Stepan Neustroyev about his presentation to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, dated 6 in May 1945 of the year. But the Combat will receive the Golden Star only a year later - by Decree of the USSR AFP from 8 May 1946. The reason for the delay is rather ordinary - it was taken a long time to understand, which divisions first broke into the Reichstag and hoisted their assault flag over it. After all, similar red panels with white paint painted with a star, a sickle and a hammer were prepared by at least nine ...
At the end of the war, the “batyana” -kombat was only 23-th year. But he looked brave, despite the fact that he was not tall, he was pockmarked and, in general, did not fit the standards of the epic handsome warrior. However, wiry, strong, and not only the body, but also the spirit. True, he had a very hairy, rectilinear character, often cutting the uterine truth, despite the ranks and titles, which the authorities did not always like, and the truth-seeker himself was pretty spoiled by life.
... Military service of 19-year-old Stepan, a turner of the Berezovzoloto trust, began in June of 1941, when he entered the Cherkassy Military Infantry School, which had just been redeployed from Ukraine to Sverdlovsk. The course is accelerated. Six months later, Neustroyev is a lieutenant and a platoon commander of a foot reconnaissance rifle regiment near Moscow. And from the go - to hell. This is how an unstripped officer remembered his first attack: “I remember one thing from this battle: I ran forward almost completely in the smoke of breaks ... People fell to my right and left ... In that first fight I understood little ...”.
The first injury was not long in coming - the jagged fragment shattered two ribs and stuck in the liver. When discharged from the hospital they were stunned: “By the drill. But it is not suitable for intelligence "...
In 1944 Neustroyev in captain's shoulder straps, he finds himself in the 756 rifle regiment of that same 150 th Idritsky division, whose number will be forever imprinted on the Victory Banner. As part of this compound came to Berlin. By that time, the chest of a dashing battalion commander, as the front-line soldiers used to say, was decorated with an entire iconostasis — six combat awards: orders of Alexander Nevsky, the Red Star, World War I and II degrees and two medals, “For Courage” and “For the Capture of Warsaw”. As for combat wounds, the fearless officer had five of them, only one less than the awards ...
30 April 1945, the battalion fighters of captain Neustroyev first broke into the Reichstag, and some time later hoisted the red triumphant panel on the pediment (we note, not on the dome), firmly tied the shaft with straps to one of the sculptural compositions. It was this assault flag that was destined to become the Banner of Victory.
Subsequently, Neustroyev continued his service in the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany (GASOVG), which was established from 9 on 10 in June 1945 of the year on the basis of the 1 of the Ukrainian Front, in the former position of commander.
THE VENUE OF VICTORY AT THE PARADE OF VICTORY WAS NOT
Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the first commander of the GSSOVG, who was appointed to receive the Victory Parade on Red Square, took the initiative to deliver an assault flag from Berlin to Moscow. In addition, the abbreviated inscription was made on the red panel: “150 page of the Order of Kutuzov, II degree. Idritsk. div 79 C.K. 3 W.A. 1 BF. Accompanied by a dedicated aircraft Stepan Neustroyev and four of his comrades. It is symbolic that at the Tushino airfield, the Victory Banner was met by a guard of honor commanded by captain Valentin Varennikov, also a participant in the storming of Berlin, the future army general and Hero of the Soviet Union.
Opening a grand parade on Red Square was planned to pass the calculation of the Banner of Victory. But the standard-bearer Neustroyev and his assistants, who did not learn to clearly print a step on the battlefields, did not impress Zhukov at rehearsals, and he decided not to endure the Banner on Red Square. “How to go on the attack, Neustroyev is the first, but I’m not fit for the parade,” later recalled the thought that flashed through his mind with sad irony.
In August, 1946 Neustroyev, on the eve of getting major straps, was going to enroll in the Military Academy. Mv Frunze. But the medical board "rejected" him for health reasons, the reason - five wounds and slight limp. Then Stepan Andreevich in the hearts writes a report on the dismissal and goes home to the Urals.
Yet many years later, Stepan Andreevich’s dream of marching through Red Square with the Victory Banner came true: May 9 1985 at a military parade dedicated to the 30 anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, he solemnly marched alongside a military shrine as an assistant with a saber bald.
In service in "places not so remote ..."
After a short rest, Neustroyev decided to look for a job. But the only specialty of the turner is somewhat forgotten. And here the former front-line soldiers, who were employed in the camps for German prisoners of war, scattered throughout the Urals, call to themselves: they say, they are serving a long time, and rations, and the salaries are good at that time. Neustroy reluctantly (probably, did not want to see again "these Fritz") agrees and, apparently, considers this a continuation of the struggle against fascism.
In his record of service, new positions unusual for a military officer appear: job titles: head of the camp department of the Office of the POW camp No. 200 (Alapayevsk), then head of the KEO section of the POW camp No. 531 (headquarters in Sverdlovsk).
German prisoners of war are building workshops of new plants, building houses for workers, paving roads and communications. Looking at these wretched warriors in their worn uniforms, the front-line soldier probably remembered with what sweat and blood he had with his battalion to take every line of the enemy, every nazi fortified, and how much he had lost his comrades. Not to mention the Reichstag, which, with the despair of a hunted beast, was fiercely defended by selected SS units.
By the end of 1949, in connection with the mass repatriation of prisoners of war to Germany, the camps one by one were abolished. Neustroyev transferred to the service in the system of corrective labor institutions. In the record of service are the following positions: commandant of Pervouralsk ITK No. 6, chief of EHF (cultural and educational part) of Revdinskaya ITK No. 7, instructor of combat training of the security headquarters UITLK UMVD of the Sverdlovsk region ...
It was morally more difficult for a combat officer to work in zones where “his” criminals are sitting, than with the Germans. There were enemies behind the "thorn", and here - after all, ours ...
1953 year. Stalin's death. The ITU system was the first to feel the changes that were taking shape in the country - reviews of convicts and release under amnesty began. In May of the same year, Neustroyev for the second time takes off his shoulder straps, he is fired due to staff reductions.
GUARDING NUCLEAR OBJECTS
Again Neustroyev out of work, but still far from retirement. This time in Sverdlovsk, he gets a job as a simple fitter at the local machine building plant of Minkhimprom. There are a lot of front-line soldiers among partners, they learn quickly, get the fifth rank. In 1957, the workshop fulfills the plan ahead of time. Stepan Andreevich and several other foremost workers were rewarded with free vouchers to a sanatorium in Yalta. On the way back he stopped in Moscow, visited old front-line friends. And then fate takes another steep turn.
Someone from fellow soldiers called the former commander of the 79 Infantry Corps, which included the 150 Division, Semyon Nikiforovich Peververtkin and said that the same battalion commander who had taken the Reichstag was visiting them. Perevertkin, by that time Colonel-General and First Deputy of the “civilian” USSR Minister of the Interior Nikolai Pavlovich Dudorov, immediately sent the car with an order to immediately deliver the hero to him. The meeting ended with the fact that the general persuaded Neustroyev to return to military service, but, truth, to the internal troops. “From Moscow,” recalled Stepan Andreevich, “I arrived in Sverdlovsk already in the military.”
Parts of the internal troops, in which Neustroyev continued military service, were guarded by important defense enterprises, where, as they used to say, the “nuclear missile shield” of the Motherland was forged. Previously, these were top-secret cities, as they sang in one popular song, “they have no name”, but only a secret code - Sverdlovsk-44 and Sverdlovsk-45. Such cities were not marked on geographic maps: barbed wire around them, a thorough checkpoint system, a strict regime of state secrets for all residents around them. Nowadays, these cities, although still protected, still declassified and even have their own websites. The first, Novouralsk, in which nuclear munitions were produced, the second, Lesnoy, where highly enriched uranium was produced.
The service is extremely responsible. Therefore, in the foreground - the highest vigilance, the strictest secrecy, the most severe access control, which the watchman of the guarded object with the Golden Star of the Hero demanded from the sentries. Both soldiers and officers, like God, obeyed him - without question: he took the Reichstag! And that's it.
In 1959, Neustroyev is being promoted - by the deputy commander of the 31 internal security detachment (in the military, therefore, the regiment commander) in the closed Novouralsk and is promoted to lieutenant colonel. And in March, 1962 for the third time removes shoulder straps - this time it is dismissed due to illness with the right to wear military uniforms.
Stepan Andreevich and his family, on the advice of the doctors, move to Krasnodar for residence, sit down at their own memoirs, in which they intend to tell the whole truth about how they took Berlin, stormed the “den of the fascist beast” - the Reichstag. And here in the local publishing house of his memoirs "Russian soldier: On the way to the Reichstag" stand several reprints. In 1975, to the 30 anniversary of the victory, Neustroyev, as a participant of the Great Patriotic War and the Hero of the Soviet Union, was given the military rank of "colonel".
In 1980, again on the advice of doctors, Neustroyev moves to live in Crimea - in Sevastopol. And here he is apprehended by a terrible tragedy: in 1988, his son Yuri, a major missile of the air defense forces, along with his wife and six-year-old son, is killed in a car accident ... The irreparable loss severely undermines the poor health of the front-line soldier. But he tries to stay on, continues to work on improving his memoirs, meets with young people, talks about the war, about the exploits ...
In the middle of 90, Stepan Andreevich and his wife returned to Krasnodar, in front of the Ukrainian Crimea, the front-line soldier becomes unbearable - he often hears the offensive in his address - the occupier. And in February 1998, on the eve of February 23 celebrations, he decides to go to Sevastopol and visit his daughter’s family. But the trip turned out to be fatal - the heart of the veteran failed February 26 and the legendary “Victory Commander” died suddenly ... They buried the hero with military honors at the Kalfa cemetery on the outskirts of Sevastopol ...
Now, after the reunification of the Crimea with Russia, the soldiers of the internal troops took patronage over the grave of the legendary Kombat Victory.
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