Pioneer heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Little standard bearer. How a schoolboy preserved the military shrines of the Red Army Kravchuk Konstantin Kononovich born in 1931

The feat of 10-year-old Konstantin Kononovich Kravchuk, who earned the Order of the Red Banner for him.

Someone might say that it’s hard to keep the secret about the hidden banners from the Germans for only 3 years. In fact, captured enemy banners have always had an important symbolic meaning, which in the 20th century was played up by the propaganda of almost all countries that had similar military successes associated with the capture of banners of defeated enemy units. The Germans are on initial stages war, when they took a lot of trophies, they loved to be photographed not only against the backdrop of our abandoned and broken equipment, but also showed off the captured banners as a symbol of their inevitable victory.

On the topic of captured Soviet banners (military and party) you can read here http://skaramanga-1972.livejournal.com/71632.html (and here http://skaramanga-1972.livejournal.com/71277.html on the topic German captured banners)
Then everything went to reverse side and it is no coincidence that the culmination of the Victory Parade, as a high point in the Great Patriotic War, was precisely the German banners thrown at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum, which symbolized the final defeat of Germany in the war with the USSR.

The merit of Kostya Kravchuk is that he is in his at a young age kept a piece of our defeat in 1941 and did not let it fall into the hands of the enemy. What is this against the backdrop of those millions of dead and the titanic efforts of the entire people? Just three years to keep your mouth shut. It would seem like a small thing. But it was precisely from such “little things” that those who fought at the front, worked in the rear and fought in partisan detachments put into a common foundation that our Victory took shape.
I remembered this moment back at the age of 10, when I was reading famous book Smirnov’s “Brest Fortress”, I was struck by the story of the rescued banner of the 393rd separate anti-aircraft artillery division, which, during the defense of the Brest Fortress, was placed in a bucket and in the casemate of the Eastern Fort, and was found only in 1956.

In 1955, when articles about defense began to appear in newspapers Brest Fortress, a metallurgical plant worker, junior reserve sergeant Rodion Semenyuk came to one of the district commissars of the city of Stalinsk-Kuznetsky in Siberia.
“In 1941, I fought in the Brest Fortress and buried the banner of our division there,” he explained. —
It must be intact. I remember where it is buried, and if I am sent to Brest, I will get it. I already wrote to you before...
The military commissar was an indifferent person and did not like to do anything that was direct and
was not directly prescribed by superiors. At one time he visited
front, fought well, was wounded, had military awards, but once in
office, gradually began to fear everything that disturbed the usual course
institutional life of the commissariat and went beyond the instructions issued
above. And there are no instructions on what to do with the banners buried during
He didn’t have the Great Patriotic War.
He remembered that it was actually a year or a year and a half ago that he received a letter from
this Semenyuk about the same banner, read it, thought and ordered
archived without response. Moreover, in the personal file kept in
military registration and enlistment office, Rodion Ksenofontovich Semenyuk seemed to the commissar a figure
suspicious. He spent three and a half years in captivity, and then fought in
some kind of partisan detachment. The military commissar firmly considered former prisoners as people
dubious and unworthy of trust. Yes, and the instructions that he used to
received in past years, they were ordered not to trust those who had been captured.

However, now Semenyuk was sitting in front of him personally, and something had to
respond to his statement about the banner.
Looking dissatisfied and gloomily into the open, simple-minded face of the short
and the very youthful Semenyuk, the military commissar, nodded his head with importance.
- I remember, I remember, citizen Semenyuk. We read your letter...
We consulted... The banner is yours special significance now it doesn't. Like this…
- But this is the Brest Fortress, Comrade Commissar... - confused
Semenyuk objected. — They wrote about her in the newspaper...
The Commissioner had the vaguest idea about the Brest Fortress and
I haven’t read anything about her in the newspapers. But he had no intention of undermining his authority.
- That's right... they wrote... I know, I know, citizen Semenyuk... I saw it. Right
they write in the newspapers. But it’s one thing what they write, but here it’s another... You never know
what... That's it, that means...

Semenyuk left the military commissar puzzled and upset. Is it really true
battle banner of their 393rd separate anti-aircraft artillery battalion, under
which they fought in the Eastern Fort of the Brest Fortress no longer has
no significance for the people, for history? It seemed to him that something was wrong here
yes, but a military commissar is a person invested with trust and must know the true
the value of this banner.

Semenyuk often recalled those terrible, tragic days in Vostochny
fort. I remembered how he wore this banner on his chest under his tunic and that’s all
time he was afraid that he would be wounded and that he would fall unconscious into the hands of the enemy,
I remembered a party meeting at which they swore an oath to fight to the end.
And then this terrible bombing, when the earthen ramparts shook and from the walls
and bricks fell from the ceilings of the casemates. Then Major Gavrilov ordered
bury the banner so that it does not fall to the Nazis - it has already become clear that the fort
won't last long.

The three of them buried him - with some infantryman named Tarasov, and
with Semenyuk’s former fellow villager Ivan Folvarkov. Folvarkov
even offered to burn the banner, but Semenyuk did not agree. They wrapped him in
tarpaulin, placed in a tarpaulin bucket taken from the stable, and then placed
still in a zinc bucket and buried in one of the casemates. And we just had time
do this and cover the compacted earth with garbage, just like the Nazis burst into
fort. Tarasov was immediately killed, and Folvarkov was captured along with Semenyuk
and died later, in Hitler’s camp.

Many times both in captivity and then, after returning to his homeland, Semenyuk
mentally imagined how he would unveil this banner. He remembered that the casemate
is located in the outer horseshoe-shaped shaft, in its right wing, but I have already forgotten,
Which one is he from the edge? However, he was confident that he would find it right away
premises as soon as they arrive. But how to get there?
Only in 1956, having heard on the radio about the defense of the fortress and learned about
meeting of the Brest heroes, Semenyuk realized that the district military commissar was wrong, and
wrote directly to Moscow, to the Main Political Directorate of the Ministry
defense A call immediately came from there - Semenyuk was invited to come urgently
to the capital.

He arrived in Brest in September, a month after they visited there
heroes of defense. The day came when he, accompanied by several officers and
soldiers with shovels and picks entered the horseshoe-shaped courtyard of the East Fort.
Semenyuk was worried, his hands were shaking. Everything had an impact here - and
memories of the experience here, on this piece of land, and for the first time
the fear that gripped him: “What if I don’t find the banner?!”
They entered a narrow courtyard between the ramparts. Everyone looked questioningly at
Semenyuk. And he stopped and looked around carefully, trying
collect scattered thoughts and concentrate - remember in all
details of that day, June 30, 1941.

- In my opinion, here! - he said, pointing to the door of one of the casemates.
Once inside, he looked around and stamped his foot on the floor.
- Here!
Soldiers with shovels prepared to dig. But he suddenly stopped them:
- Wait!..
And, hastily approaching the doors of the casemate, he looked out into the courtyard, wondering
distance from the edge of the shaft. He was shaking nervously.
- No! - he finally said decisively. - It's not here. It's nearby.
They moved to the next one, exactly the same casemate, and Semenyuk removed
soldier:
- I myself!
He took a shovel and began to dig, hastily and nervously throwing it
side to the ground. The soil, compacted over many years, was dense and unyielding.
Semenyuk was breathing heavily, sweat was pouring off him, but every time he
stopped soldiers when they wanted to help him. He has to dig it himself
banner, only myself...
Everyone watched him in tense silence. The pit was already pretty
deep, but Semenyuk said that he buried the bucket at a depth of half a meter.
The officers began to look at each other doubtfully.
And he himself was already falling into despair. Where, where is this banner? It's already
should have appeared a long time ago. Did he really confuse the casemate - after all, they are all like that
similar to each other? Or maybe the Germans dug up the banner then, at forty
first?

And suddenly, when he was ready to stop working, the blade of the shovel
there was a distinct clanking sound on the metal, and the edge of some kind of
metal disk.
This was the bottom of a zinc bucket. He immediately remembered that then, at forty
first, they did not put the package in the bucket, but closed it on top: in case
if the casemate had been destroyed, the bucket would have protected the banner from rain and melt water,
seeping from the surface of the earth.
Everyone bent over the pit in excitement. And Semenyuk feverishly quickly
dug up the bucket and finally pulled it out of the ground.
Memory did not fail - the bundle with the banner was here, where he left it with
comrades fifteen years ago. But has the banner itself survived? Zinc
the bucket was visible through and through, like a sieve - it was all corroded by salts
land.
With trembling hands, he took the second canvas bucket that was lying under
zinc. It crumbled into dust, completely decayed over the years. Underneath was
a thinner tarpaulin in which they then wrapped the banner. He also decayed and
was falling apart in rags while Semenyuk hastily opened the package. And now
The red material turned red and the letters flashed gold...

Semenyuk carefully touched the panel with his finger. No, the banner has not decayed, it
preserved perfectly.
Then he slowly unfolded it and, straightening it, raised it above his head. On
On the red banner there was an inscription in gold: “Workers of all countries, unite!” AND
below: "393rd separate anti-aircraft artillery division." Everyone stood silently
looking in fascination at this battle relic, extracted from the ground later
one and a half decades. Semenyuk carefully handed the banner to one of the officers and
got out of the hole. He couldn't feel his feet from joy.
And the next day a solemn ceremony was lined up in the central courtyard of the fortress.
the structure of the military unit located here. To the sounds of the orchestra, clearly
imprinting his step, the standard bearer passed in front of the formation, and the scarlet banner curled behind
downwind. And after this banner, another one moved along the line, but already
without a shaft. He was carried in outstretched arms by a short, youthful man in
civilian clothes, and the silently frozen ranks of soldiers paid honor to this
to the glorious banner of the heroes of the Brest Fortress, covered in the smoke of fierce battles for
Homeland, the banner that was carried past them by the man who fought with him on
chest and preserved it for posterity.

The banner of the 393rd division, found by Rodion Semenyuk, was handed over
then to the Museum of the Defense of the Brest Fortress, where it is now kept. Semenyuk himself
At the same time I arrived from Brest to Minsk, attended a reception there with the deputy
commander of the Belarusian Military District, and later visited me in Moscow and
told about how he found the banner. A year later, when the Soviet
the government awarded heroes of defense, the famous metallurgist of Kuzbass Rodion
Semenyuk received the Order of the Red for saving the battle flag of his unit
Banner.
Some readers will probably want to ask me: how
feels like a district military officer who, with such a stupid, bureaucratic
reacted with indifference to Semenyuk’s message about the banner and declared it “not having
meaning"? I think he now has a different opinion. I called him
name in the Ministry of Defense, and I was informed that this soulless and
the narrow-minded official received a strict punishment.

http://lib.ru/PRIKL/SMIRNOW/brest.txt - Smirnov “Brest Fortress”.

Valya Kotik

He was born on February 11, 1930 in the village of Khmelevka, Shepetovsky district, Khmelnitsky region. He studied at school No. 4 in the city of Shepetovka, and was a recognized leader of the pioneers, his peers.

When the Nazis burst into Shepetivka, Valya Kotik and his friends decided to fight the enemy. The guys collected weapons at the battle site, which the partisans then transported to the detachment on a cart of hay.

Having taken a closer look at the boy, the communists entrusted Valya with being a liaison and intelligence officer in their underground organization. He learned the location of enemy posts and the order of changing the guard.

The Nazis planned a punitive operation against the partisans, and Valya, having tracked down the Nazi officer who led the punitive forces, killed him...

When arrests began in the city, Valya, along with his mother and brother Victor, went to join the partisans. The pioneer, who had just turned fourteen years old, fought shoulder to shoulder with adults, freeing native land. He is responsible for six enemy trains blown up on the way to the front. Valya Kotik was awarded the order Patriotic War 1st degree, medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" 2nd degree.

Valya Kotik died as a hero, and the Motherland posthumously awarded him the title of Hero Soviet Union. A monument to him was erected in front of the school where this brave pioneer studied.

Zina Portnova

The war found the Leningrad pioneer Zina Portnova in the village of Zuya, where she came for vacation, not far from the Obol station in the Vitebsk region. An underground Komsomol-youth organization “Young Avengers” was created in Obol, and Zina was elected a member of its committee. She took part in daring operations against the enemy, in sabotage, distributed leaflets, and conducted reconnaissance on instructions from a partisan detachment.

It was December 1943. Zina was returning from a mission. In the village of Mostishche she was betrayed by a traitor. The Nazis captured the young partisan and tortured her. The answer to the enemy was Zina’s silence, her contempt and hatred, her determination to fight to the end. During one of the interrogations, choosing the moment, Zina grabbed a pistol from the table and fired at point-blank range at the Gestapo man.

The officer who ran in to hear the shot was also killed on the spot. Zina tried to escape, but the Nazis overtook her...

The brave young pioneer was brutally tortured, but until the last minute she remained persistent, courageous, and unbending. And the Motherland posthumously celebrated her feat with its highest title - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Kostya Kravchuk

On June 11, 1944, units leaving for the front were lined up in the central square of Kyiv. And before this battle formation, they read out the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on awarding the pioneer Kostya Kravchuk with the Order of the Red Banner for saving and preserving two battle flags of rifle regiments during the occupation of the city of Kyiv...

Retreating from Kyiv, two wounded soldiers entrusted Kostya with the banners. And Kostya promised to keep them.

At first I buried it in the garden under a pear tree: I thought our people would return soon. But the war dragged on, and, having dug up the banners, Kostya kept them in the barn until he remembered about an old, abandoned well outside the city, near the Dnieper. Having wrapped his priceless treasure in burlap and rolled it with straw, he got out of the house at dawn and, with a canvas bag over his shoulder, led a cow to a distant forest. And there, looking around, he hid the bundle in the well, covered it with branches, dry grass, turf...

And throughout the long occupation the pioneer carried out his difficult guard at the banner, although he was caught in a raid, and even fled from the train in which the Kievites were driven away to Germany.

When Kyiv was liberated, Kostya, in a white shirt with a red tie, came to the military commandant of the city and unfurled banners in front of the well-worn and yet amazed soldiers.

On June 11, 1944, the newly formed units leaving for the front were given replacements by the rescued Kostya.

Kravchuk Konstantin Kononovich(born 1931) - Soviet schoolboy, pioneer. Known for the fact that, risking his life and the lives of his loved ones, he saved and preserved during fascist occupation banners of the 968th and 970th rifle regiments of the 255th rifle division. The youngest holder of the Order of the Red Banner.

Biography

September 20, 1941 during the battles as a result of which Kyiv was occupied fascist troops, Kostya, like other civilians, took refuge in basements and trenches. At some point there was a lull, and Kostya looked out of the basement. There were two Red Army soldiers on the street, whom Kostya decided to run up to. One of the Red Army soldiers had a package. After he made sure that Kostya was a pioneer, the Red Army soldier handed the package to Kostya and told him to keep it. In the bundle, Kostya found regimental banners, which he promptly hid in a nearby garden, burying them in the ground.

When the rains began, Kostya was forced to hide them, which was complicated by the constant patrolling of the streets by the Germans. However, Kostya was able to hide the banners. He put them in a canvas bag, tarred it and lowered it into an abandoned well. Regularly checking the safety of the banners, Kostya came to the attention of a German patrol, who detained the boy, and after that Kostya was forcibly sent to Germany. After some time, Kostya escaped and crossed the front line. Kyiv had been liberated by that time, so the very next day after returning home, Kostya took out the banners, which were already considered lost, from the cache and returned them to the city commandant. Later, many volunteers joined the regiments restored under these banners.

On June 1, 1944, Kostya Kravchuk was awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

When the war began, Kiev resident Kostya Kravchuk was 10 years old.

The Germans entered the mother of Russian cities on September 19. It was on this day that fate crossed the path of Kostya Kravchuk with a group of wounded Red Army soldiers, who, having no illusions about their future, handed over two battle flags to him for safekeeping.

At first, Kostya simply buried a bundle with banners in the garden, but the situation in captured Kyiv was not calm, and there was no reason to expect a quick return. The Germans imposed a new order harshly: Kyiv Jews almost immediately moved in an organized manner to Babi Yar, columns of prisoners stretched through the city, behind which remained the corpses of exhausted Red Army soldiers mercilessly shot by guards. Kostya decided to hide the banners more reliably - and away from his house: he packed the banners in a canvas bag, carefully tarred it and hid it in an abandoned well.

Keeping a secret - even from my mother - must have been very difficult. Especially considering that Kostya was left without a father early on: he died before the war. However, until the liberation of Kyiv, no one learned about the banners.

Kostya periodically went to the well and checked if his treasure was there. Once, already in 1943, he was unlucky: he was caught in a raid and was suddenly packed onto a train transporting Ukrainian youth to Germany. He was lucky to escape from the train, but he reached his native Obolonskaya Street after Kyiv was liberated by the Red Army.

And then, after a joyful meeting with his mother, he took the banners of the 968th and 970th rifle regiments to the military commandant’s office.

Presumably, some time was spent checking the circumstances: it’s not every day that a bundle with military relics lands on the commandant’s desk. But on May 23, 1944, award documents were drawn up for Kostya: for saving the Battle Banner in the Soviet Union, he was awarded an order. On May 31, Kostya Kravchuk was reported to Stalin, and on June 1, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was signed awarding Konstantin Kononovich Kravchuk, born in 1931, with the Order of the Red Banner.

There is scant information about the post-war fate of K.K. Kravchuk. It is only known that he continued his studies at the Kharkov Suvorov Military School (established in 1943, in 1947 it was transferred to Kyiv), lived and worked in Kyiv, at the Arsenal. He obviously worked with dignity: they wrote that in the 1970s his chest was decorated with the second Order of the Red Banner, this time of Labor.

PS: The Battle Banner of a unit, which is well known to everyone who has served in the army, “is a symbol of military honor, valor and glory,” and the need to selflessly and courageously defend and defend the main relic of any military unit - the Battle Banner, to prevent its capture by the enemy - is directly written down in all Charters, including the current one. The loss of a military unit, as a rule, led to the disbandment of the unit and the demoting of its command; preservation of the Banner, even if almost everyone died personnel, was a necessary condition for the restoration of the part. The fate of even the honored guards units that lost their banners in the hardest battles (even though the banners were not captured by the enemy; most often they were destroyed or hidden by the dying banner group) was decided individually by the Supreme Command Headquarters.

Yes, Kostya Kravchuk did not kill enemies and did not deliver particularly important intelligence information to his own. His feat was quiet and, as many people think, unnoticeable, unheroic. But this was a real feat: a worthy son of his Motherland saved its shrines from desecration by the enemy. But all that was needed was not to pass by the wounded Red Army soldier. And the non-standard entry on the award sheet in the “Title” field is a clear reflection of this feat. It is a feat to be a citizen of not “this”, not “that”; your country, our country.

There is always something sacred that the hands of the enemy cannot, must not touch. It was; that's it; That is how it should be.

The feat of 10-year-old Konstantin Kononovich Kravchuk, who earned the Order of the Red Banner for him.

Someone might say that it’s hard to keep a secret from the Germans about the hidden banners for only 3 years. In fact, captured enemy banners have always had an important symbolic meaning, which in the 20th century was played up by the propaganda of almost all countries that had similar military successes associated with the capture of banners of defeated enemy units. The Germans in the initial stages of the war, when they took a lot of trophies, loved to be photographed not only against the backdrop of our abandoned and broken equipment, but also showed captured banners as a symbol of their inevitable victory.

On the topic of captured Soviet banners (military and party) you can read here http://skaramanga-1972.livejournal.com/71632.html (and here http://skaramanga-1972.livejournal.com/71277.html on the topic German captured banners)
Then everything went in the opposite direction and it is no coincidence that the culmination of the Victory Parade, as a high point in the Great Patriotic War, was precisely the German banners thrown at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum, which symbolized the final defeat of Germany in the war with the USSR.

The merit of Kostya Kravchuk is that at his young age he kept a piece of our defeat of 1941 and did not let it fall into the hands of the enemy. What is this against the backdrop of those millions of dead and the titanic efforts of the entire people? Just three years to keep your mouth shut. It would seem like a small thing. But it was precisely from such “little things” that those who fought at the front, worked in the rear and fought in partisan detachments put into a common foundation that our Victory was formed.
I remembered this moment back at the age of 10, when, while reading Smirnov’s famous book “Brest Fortress”, I was struck by the story of the rescued banner of the 393rd separate anti-aircraft artillery division, which, during the defense of the Brest Fortress, was placed in a bucket and in the casemate of the Eastern fort, but it was found only in 1956.

In 1955, when articles about defense began to appear in newspapers Brest Fortress, a metallurgical plant worker, junior reserve sergeant Rodion Semenyuk came to one of the district commissars of the city of Stalinsk-Kuznetsky in Siberia.
“In 1941, I fought in the Brest Fortress and buried the banner of our division there,” he explained. -
It must be intact. I remember where it is buried, and if they send me to Brest, I will get it. I already wrote to you before...
The military commissar was an indifferent person and did not like to do anything that was direct and
was not directly prescribed by superiors. At one time he visited
front, fought well, was wounded, had military awards, but, having fallen into
office, gradually began to fear everything that disturbed the usual course
institutional life of the commissariat and went beyond the instructions issued
above. And there are no instructions on what to do with the banners buried during
He didn’t have the Great Patriotic War.
He remembered that it was actually a year or a year and a half ago that he received a letter from
this Semenyuk about the same banner, read it, thought and ordered
archived without response. Moreover, in the personal file kept in
military registration and enlistment office, Rodion Ksenofontovich Semenyuk seemed to the commissar a figure
suspicious. He spent three and a half years in captivity, and then fought in
some kind of partisan detachment. The military commissar firmly considered former prisoners as people
dubious and unworthy of trust. Yes, and the instructions that he used to
received in past years, they were ordered not to trust those who had been captured.

However, now Semenyuk was sitting in front of him personally, and something had to
respond to his statement about the banner.
Looking dissatisfied and gloomily into the open, simple-minded face of the short
and the very youthful Semenyuk, the military commissar, nodded his head with importance.
- I remember, I remember, citizen Semenyuk. We read your letter...
We consulted... This banner of yours has no special meaning now. Like this...
- But this is the Brest Fortress, Comrade Commissar... - confused
Semenyuk objected. - They wrote about her in the newspaper...
The Commissioner had the vaguest idea about the Brest Fortress and
I haven’t read anything about her in the newspapers. But he had no intention of undermining his authority.
- That's right... they wrote... I know, I know, citizen Semenyuk... I saw it. Right
they write in the newspapers. But it’s one thing what they write, but here it’s another... You never know
what... That's it, that means...

Semenyuk often recalled those terrible, tragic days in Vostochny
fort. I remembered how he wore this banner on his chest under his tunic and that’s all
time he was afraid that he would be wounded and that he would fall unconscious into the hands of the enemy,
I remembered a party meeting at which they swore an oath to fight to the end.
And then this terrible bombing, when the earthen ramparts shook and from the walls
and bricks fell from the ceilings of the casemates. Then Major Gavrilov ordered
bury the banner so that it would not fall to the Nazis - it became clear that the fort
won't last long.

In my opinion, here! - he said, pointing to the door of one of the casemates.
Once inside, he looked around and stamped his foot on the floor.
- Here!
Soldiers with shovels prepared to dig. But he suddenly stopped them:
- Wait!..
And, hastily approaching the doors of the casemate, he looked out into the courtyard, wondering
distance from the edge of the shaft. He was shaking nervously.
- No! - he finally said decisively. - It's not here. It's nearby.
They moved to the next one, exactly the same casemate, and Semenyuk removed
soldier:
- I myself!
He took a shovel and began to dig, hastily and nervously throwing it
side to the ground. The soil, compacted over many years, was dense and unyielding.
Semenyuk was breathing heavily, sweat was pouring off him, but every time he
stopped soldiers when they wanted to help him. He has to dig it himself
banner, just myself...
Everyone watched him in tense silence. The pit was already pretty
deep, but Semenyuk said that he buried the bucket at a depth of half a meter.
The officers began to look at each other doubtfully.
And he himself was already falling into despair. Where, where is this banner? It's already
should have appeared a long time ago. Did he really confuse the casemate - after all, they are all like that
similar to each other? Or maybe the Germans dug up the banner then, at forty
first?

Therefore, in its symbolic meaning, the feat of Kostya Kravchuk is equivalent to the feat of those soldiers who, even at the cost of their lives, sought to prevent our banners from falling to the enemy. And that's why it was so highly rated.