People’s Artist Ovsyannikov found the grave of his grandfather who disappeared during the war

“There was no data on Vasily Ivanovich Kovalev in the registry”

People’s Artist of Russia Vasily Ovsyannikov, while on tour in Karelia, found the grave of his grandfather, a front-line soldier, who had been listed as missing since 1942. The professor at the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts shared his personal story with MK.

“My grandfather, Vasily Ivanovich Kovalev, and his two brothers died during the Great Patriotic War,” says Vasily Ovsyannikov. — The youngest, Ivan Ivanovich, died in his native Bryansk region. He was not even 18 years old, he fought in a partisan detachment. They burned German warehouses and disrupted cargo transportation for the Nazis. The Germans sent punitive detachments to search for the partisans. In one of the battles, my grandfather’s brother, together with a machine gunner, covered the retreat of a partisan detachment. Ivan handed him machine-gun belts.

Their position, as our interlocutor recalls, was near the Desna, where the coast is cut by deep ravines.

— The Nazis opened mortar fire on them. Both the machine gunner and his young assistant were killed. Only two weeks later, when the Germans stopped committing atrocities, the great-grandmother went to the river bank, hoping to find her son’s body. The fighting took place 3-4 kilometers from the village. She recognized her Ivan by his embroidered shirt. Each village craftswoman embroidered and painted clothes with her own special cross. The great-grandmother had to collect the remains of her son in parts. She carried them in a wicker basket to the village cemetery and buried them.

Vasily Ovsyannikov remembers how, as pioneers, they laid wreaths and flowers at the obelisk on Victory Day.

— Great-grandmother stood at the outskirts of the village, where the village cemetery was located. She had a large bowl of treats in her hands. She handed out cookies and sweets to us and said: “Thank you, sons.” In her house there hung three portraits of her dead sons: the eldest Yegor, the middle Vasily and the youngest Ivan. When the great-grandmother died, the portraits were dismantled. Mom took as a souvenir a portrait of my father, my grandfather Vasily Ivanovich Kovalev, who was listed as missing. The family believed that he died near Moscow.

Vasily Ovsyannikov says that, already as an adult, he began searching for his grandfather’s grave. The “Memory of the People” portal had just appeared, where one could find information about the soldiers who took part in the Great Patriotic War and get acquainted with authentic archival documents.

— My grandfather’s data was not in the registry. One of the clerks who compiled the lists when the funerals arrived made a mistake both in the name of the Trubchevsky district and in the name of the village where the grandfather was from. Historical information was found in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, located in Podolsk. It became known that my grandfather, Vasily Ivanovich Kovalev, died of wounds on May 7, 1942 and was buried in the Loukhsky district, in Karelia. The coordinates of the burial site were indicated.

This fall, the tour of People’s Artist of Russia Vasily Ovsyannikov was just ending in North Karelia.

— In the Loukhsky district, search engines met me and helped me at a military burial in the village of Sosnovy to find a memorial plaque where my grandfather’s name was engraved. He lies in a mass grave. More than 6 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers who participated in offensive and defensive operations in 1941-44 are buried here. In the post-war period, the remains of soldiers from scattered graves were buried here.

Vasily Kovalev died in the spring of 1942. And only 80 years later, his grandson, Vasily Ovsyannikov, managed to find out where the front-line soldier in whose honor he was named was buried.

— They laid flowers, I took a handful of earth from the grave. And then we sang “Katyusha,” as Lidia Ruslanova sang this song at the walls of the Reichstag in the victorious 1945.