The Last Hero of the Great War: how centennial Boris Kravtsov lives

Until recently, there were four of them. Two attack pilots, a reconnaissance artilleryman and a gallant machine gunner… At the end of 2020, Moskovsky Komsomolets sought out and congratulated the last surviving Heroes of the Soviet Union who received their title during the Great Patriotic War. Registered and living in Moscow.

I wanted to be able to talk to these people. After all, time, alas, is inexorable, the hands of the clock do not stop even for a second.

Everyone dreams of living to see the centenary, but only a few survive to see it. And now he was left alone from the circle of comrades-in-arms. What does it mean to feel like the last hero, we asked Boris Vasilyevich Kravtsov.

“I feel good. It is completely in the hands of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, which will celebrate my anniversary, ”he cheerfully shared his plans for the near future by phone.

We did not dare to meet with Boris Vasilyevich personally for a very simple reason: the SARS season is in Moscow, we would not want to risk his health. Still, 100 years is no joke.

What questions would you like me to answer? he asks sternly.

So the question is simple. How to live up to such years without losing youthful courage and optimism.

The same age as the USSR, Boris Kravtsov was born just two days before the birth of the country – December 28, 1922, so we can say that they have a common anniversary.

Moscow Kremlin

The home address where the family of little Bori lived sounded absolutely unusual: Moscow, the Kremlin, apartment number 7 of the so-called Amusement Palace. And his childhood was no less unrealistic: his father served as a simple worker, went through the First World War and Civil War, was a motorcyclist in the Council of People’s Commissars, and delivered secret documents. And he also worked part-time as a stoker for Lenin himself. He heated the office of Vladimir Ilyich, maintaining a very cheerful temperature of +14 degrees at the present time.

The children of the party elite got to know the world around them with the children of the attendants. They played together and often fought. Everyone knew that his future depended not only on who his father was, but also on himself.

– Once I quarreled with Vasya Stalin. He was a year older than me and accidentally touched my younger brother, and so I sorted things out with him. Our cries reached Joseph Vissarionovich, who lived nearby in an outbuilding, Boris Vasilyevich told me. “Usually, in response to our cries, Stalin appeared at the window and banged his pipe on the glass. But that time he left the house and walked up to our fighting pile. Stalin took Vasya away, but it did not end in anything bad for my brother and me.

When Bora Kravtsov was five years old, the family received an ordinary apartment and moved. In general, an unremarkable family, of which there were hundreds of thousands. But it was in his case that the theory about the “social lift” that existed in the USSR came true for all 100. In 1971, Boris Vasilyevich was appointed prosecutor of the RSFSR, and from 1984 to 1989 he worked as the Minister of Justice of the Soviet Union.

But it was completely impossible to become a Hero of the Soviet Union in those days.

From the school desk to the front

It was a generation of idealists and romantics who believed in the future of their country, of which they were the same age. And they stepped to the front immediately from the school desk.

They knew what they were fighting for. And why they won.

Kravtsov studied in the same class with the future famous Soviet poetess Yulia Drunina.

I left my childhood in a dirty car,

In the infantry echelon, in the sanitary platoon.

Distant breaks listened and did not listen

Accustomed to everything forty-first year,

– Yulia Drunina, a front-line soldier, wrote not only about herself, but also about her generation.

The first five-year plans, the rescue of the Chelyuskinites, the conquest of the Pole, Spain, the fight against fascism, the pioneers and the Komsomol – this is what they lived from an early age.

And they were upset that … they were born too late. They were not hammered into their heads what they should be, everything happened in a completely natural way.

Boris Kravtsov did not choose his future path on his own. The Motherland did this for him too. Must, she said. And he answered: yes.

– Since childhood, my friend Gleb and I have been sick of the sea. So much special literature read! For our dreams of going on long voyages, traveling through the Amazon, the guys in the class even called us “Amazon goats”, but we were not offended at all. I was called to serve in the Navy and was engaged in special training, prepared documents for the Sevastopol Naval School and underwent appropriate training at the Ostankino Pond. On Sunday, June 22, 1941, we were given badges with the inscription “sailor”, and then Molotov spoke on the radio …

Boris was recognized as fit for naval service, but a summons came to the Belorussky railway station with things – they had to forget about the fleet.

… In October 1943, the Germans settled on the island of Khortitsa, which divided the Dnieper into two channels. It was Ukraine. A small unit of Soviet infantry was ordered to cross the river, land on Khortitsa and pull back the main enemy forces. The landing force was to be supported by our artillery. A group of artillery scouts led by senior lieutenant Kravtsov was ordered to correct the fire of the batteries.

When the Germans completely surrounded their dugout, the soldiers did not have a single cartridge left. And then Kravtsov ordered to call the fire of the batteries on himself.

“Boris, are you alive?!” – the commander did not believe when he again got in touch.

Forever in service

He finished fighting on the last day of 1943, December 31st.

“The day before, we received gifts from the rear, in honor of the holiday. These were warm things, everything practically applicable and necessary for us in those conditions. Our division occupied the Vladimirsky farm. I then went to bed in the hut and thought: “I’m unlikely to live until the Victory, they will kill me. It would be better to hurt! Better keep up.” And what do you think?! Wounded in the thigh the next day! A shell exploded five meters from me. The entire wall of the hut was riddled with fragments, one of them ricocheted at me, broke the thigh bone and remained in it. I still don’t understand how it didn’t kill me then, ”Boris Vasilyevich recalled much later.

Already in the hospital, he learned that he had become a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Boris Kravtsov gave his debt to the Motherland all his life. Since January 1971 – Prosecutor of the RSFSR, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the USSR. From 1984 to 1989 – Minister of Justice of the Soviet Union.

Many high-profile cases of that era went through prosecutor Kravtsov.

One day he almost died. The attempt was made by a person involved in one case, from the North Caucasus, who was obliged to return the money borrowed. He came to the building of the prosecutor’s office of the republic with a revolver, waited for the arrival of the prosecutor and … shot him in the shoulder. The judge asked Kravtsov what punishment the accused deserved. Boris Vasilyevich replied that since he was a front-line soldier, he was worthy of indulgence. Although the attack on the prosecutor was given capital punishment, the offender was pardoned, he received 12 years.

Since 1989, Boris Vasilyevich has been retired. He wrote the book Notes of the Prosecutor of the Republic, which was reprinted several times and nevertheless became a bibliographic rarity. Kravtsov is satisfied with his life. Few of his comrades, peers of the beautiful and tragic twentieth century, managed to become not only witnesses, but also participants in so many great events. Although he survived the country, at the same time with which he was born.

— What do I wish all people in 2023? Victory and … good, – after a little thought, Boris Vasilyevich answers.

We once again congratulate our Hero on his centenary and wish him, above all, good health. Everything else, as they say, will follow.

PS And currently the oldest Hero of the Soviet Union, the former commander-in-chief of the USSR Air Force, pilot Vasily Reshetnikov, lives in the Moscow region. On December 23, he turned 103 years old. He received his Hero Star in 1943.