One of the most, so to speak, recognizable military holidays of the Russian army calendar is the Day of the Border Guard. We recognize by the green of the caps of those who in their years stood or continue to stand today guarding the borders of the Fatherland in the literal sense of the word: from the Southern Kuriles to the westernmost point of Russia - the Kaliningrad region.
To understand the very scale of the task of protecting the state border, it is worth paying attention to some facts about our borders. Their total length is comparable to almost 10 radii of the planet Earth - about 61 thousand km. More than 22 thousand km of them are land borders. Russia officially recognizes border conditions with 18 countries of the world, and this is an absolute world record. We border by land with the Republic of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Norway, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, China, Mongolia. By sea, Russia borders directly with the United States of America and Japan.
The longest border in Russia is with the Republic of Kazakhstan: almost 6 thousand km - land and more than 7, 5 thousand km - total (including sea). The shortest border section is with the DPRK: only about 39 km.
This year, on May 28, the country's border guards have a double holiday. In addition to the Border Guard Day itself, this is also the anniversary of the formation of the country's border guard, if 1918 is taken as the starting point (as is customary today). It was then, on May 28, 1918, that the corresponding decree of the Council of People's Commissars was signed in Soviet Russia. On the basis of this decree, the General Directorate of the Border Guard was created, which at the first stage of its work faced great difficulties. The borders of the state were more like a sieve in the conditions of the ongoing First World War and the Civil War. In fact, no one was actually engaged in border protection for the simple reason that the outgoing government was clearly not up to protecting the borders from an external enemy, and the incoming government saw enemies everywhere, but had neither the strength, nor the means, nor the tools to cope with it, deciding in first of all, a question of one's own approval.
And against the background of this assertion of the Soviet government, it became obvious that without reliable border protection it would be possible to say goodbye to the government itself very soon. It was this fact that pushed the Council of People's Commissars to a decision on the emergency formation of border units, which initially included those who would later be called "unreliable elements", "servants of tsarism." These "servants of tsarism" (former officers of the Russian imperial army) must be given their due, made a huge contribution to the formation of a new system of protecting the state border, but the merits of not every one of them were appreciated by the state.
Speaking about the centenary anniversary of the establishment of the border guard, one should not forget that this is not the only anniversary celebrated today. So, exactly 60 years ago - in 1958 - the Day of the Border Guard of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics appeared in the calendar of holidays. It also became a kind of tribute to the memory of all those border guards who laid down their heads on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, who first met the enemy at the borders of the Union and who, together with others, later drove him all the way to Berlin.
The feat of the border guards during the defense of the Brest Fortress, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, Murmansk and other territories and cities has not been forgotten.
Many border guards received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union long after their feats.
So, a native of the Voronezh region, Gerasim Rubtsov, who commanded the 456th combined border regiment of the NKVD of the Primorsky Army of the North Caucasian Front, together with the regiment's servicemen, defended the main lines on the approaches to Sevastopol for 250 days. In total, the NKVD border troops regiment destroyed over two enemy infantry regiments, dozens of tanks, artillery pieces, and two bombers. Received the Hero Star in 1965.
In the same 1965, Lieutenant Andrei Kizhevatov, a native of the Penza region, received the Hero's Star, who on June 22, 1941 led the defense of the frontier post and the commandant's headquarters. Under his command, the frontier guards repulsed six (!) Attacks, twice counterattacked the enemy forces significantly superior in size and armament. He held the defense of the Brest Fortress at the Terespol Gate.
And there are hundreds of such heroic names of border guards. And not only during the Great Patriotic War.
On June 22, 1941, the political commander of the seventh outpost of the Vladimir-Volynsky frontier detachment, V. Petrov, held the crossing over the Western Bug for five hours. When the cartridges for his machine gun were finished, the officer waited for the Nazis to approach and blew himself up with a grenade, destroying up to five enemy soldiers. The very outpost, the defense of which he held together with other soldiers-border guards, was named after him.
Border guards took part in dozens of armed conflicts in which the country had to participate.
And today, in peacetime, the military personnel of the PV of the FSB of the Russian Federation have to solve a whole range of important tasks that the country faces: from ensuring a checkpoint regime for people and goods to suppressing terrorist inclinations, drug trafficking and cross-border arms trade.
Voennoye Obozreniye congratulates all active border guards and veterans of the service on their professional holiday!
