Vladimir Chukavin

My Grandfather was Killed in the Battle of Berlin on May 1, 1945

Vladimir Chukavin

“I call myself a native Tagil resident,

a former city dweller,

now a rural resident of retirement age”

Abstract

In his essay, Vladimir Chukavin relates the story of his grandfather who fell in the Battle of Berlin. In sparse words he also describes the living conditions of the rank-and-file people in the Soviet Union.

Keywords:Battle of Berlin ǀ Wilmersdorf ǀ Red Army ǀ Cheraul village ǀ Soviet peasantry

That was the last or the second to last day of the war launched by Hitler's Germany against the Soviet Union. My grandfather burned to death in his tank in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin.

Killed in Action Report

Command of the 53rd Guards Tank Brigade1

May 24, 1945 No. 0803

[subject] Chukavin Matvey

To the military commissar

of Yanaulsky district

Bashkir ASSR2

Received on June 4, 1945

Entry number 0599

Notification

Citizen Chukavina Ksenia Maksimovna, living in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Yanaulsky district, Cheraul village,3 is to be informed that her husband, mechanic and driver of the T-34 tank of military unit 21559, senior guard sergeant of the guards Chukavin Matvey Andreevich, a native of the village of Cheraul, Yanaulsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in the fight for the socialist homeland, faithful to the military oath, showing heroism and courage, burned down in his tank in the Berlin district of Wilmersdorf4 – Germany on May 1, 1945.

This notification is a document for submitting a pension application.

Order of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR No. _______________

Unit commander, captain of the guard Signature

Chief of staff, captain of the guard Signature

My Ancestors

My great-grandfather is in the middle with a beard. My great grandmother, grandfather's mother, is sitting. My great-grandfather's brother is wearing a papakha hat. The photo was taken in 1916. Apparently, the great-grandfather had just returned from the First World War.

I’ve tried to find out some information about my great-grandfather but didn't find anything. The only thing his grandson, my cousin, told me about him was that in the village his name was Andrei Toporik (Hand Axe), from a story that happened to him one winter. He once went to the river to cut a hole in the ice. While he was working, the axe fell out of his hands and went under the water. The great-grandfather then took off his clothes, jumped into the hole and pulled the axe out of the river. They obviously took great care of their instruments at that time.

I assume that the farm of my great-grandfather was destroyed in the whirlwind of revolutionary events5 and he himself, it seems to me, was not on the side of the Bolsheviks.6

If one compares the condition of grandfather's farm at the time of the war with his father's farm a few months before the 1917 revolution7 (according to the document that I also have now), a significant differen