The 90th birthday of Nikolai Vladimirovich Strutinsky was not celebrated in Ukraine in any way. In Russia, it seems, too. They did not remember him on the day of his death - July 11 … Time to correct this "omission".
To say that Strutinsky is a legendary man, and without any exaggeration, is to repeat what was said about him ten or more years ago. The phrase “legend man” in modern times began to look like a worn-out stamp of a bygone era. At best, like the venerable bronze of a monument. However, this does not fully apply to the fate of Strutinsky.
His war did not end in 1945.
It did not end in 2003, when he died.
The battle continues to this day …
Such a detail of Strutinsky's biography is legendary. He was three times nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He certainly was. And it is. A hero. Soviet Union. Judge for yourself.
Nikolai Strutinsky, a native of the Polesie village of Tuchin (now Rivne region, Ukraine), at the beginning of the war with his father and brothers created a large (fifty people!) Partisan detachment, which eventually, in September 1942, joined the partisan unit of the NKGB of the USSR "Winners "Commanded by Colonel Dmitry Medvedev. In the detachment, Strutinsky made friends and became the closest associate of the great Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov - Chief Lieutenant Paul Wilhelm Siebert. Strutinsky was (disguised as a German soldier) his driver. They have many successful military and reconnaissance operations to their credit. Including the extraction of the map, which made it possible to declassify Hitler's headquarters "Werewolf", obtaining information about Operation Citadel - about the planned German offensive in the Kursk direction. The abduction of the main punisher of Ukraine, Major General Ilgen, the elimination of the imperial financial advisor Geel, the Hitlerite executioner Winner, the SS Oberführer Funk, the deputy Reich commissar of Ukraine Knut, the vice-governor of Galicia Bauer, the assassination of the government president, Koch's deputy for "political affairs" Paul Dargel …
To get a feel for the firepower of time, here is just one episode. Nikolai Strutinsky recalled: “On November 16, 1943, on the second day after the unique capture of General von Ilgen, in the premises of the so-called Ministry of Justice in Rovno, on Shkolnaya Street, SS Oberführer Alfred Funk, close to Hitler, was killed. Hitler's court in Ukraine. At exactly nine in the morning, the SS general left the hairdresser, crossed the main street of the city and entered the apartments of his residence. And as soon as I stepped onto the second floor, three shots rang out one after the other. A tall blond man in the uniform of the Wehrmacht chief lieutenant was shooting. The bullets fired from the "Walther" hit right in the heart of the Senate-President of Justice of Ukraine. The gunman - Nikolai Kuznetsov - calmly left through the front doors of the ministry, sat on the front seat of the steel-colored Adler, which suddenly emerged from around the corner of the house, and disappeared in front of the discouraged Nazis …"
All this has long been a classic of military intelligence operations … This is bronze.
After the war, Nikolai Vladimirovich served in the state security bodies of the Lviv region and put a lot of effort into disclosing the truth about the place and circumstances of Kuznetsov's death. This truth, for a number of reasons, did not coincide with the official version of the death. Therefore, proving the truth required a certain amount of courage. The resistance was at a high and effective nomenclature level - with confusion, injecting false information, killing an employee …
Strutinsky's work was a kind of reconnaissance operation - using all possible means. He won. Truth has triumphed. The grave of the great intelligence officer was found 15 years later, the lie was destroyed by the "nomenclature of the version".
In modern realities, Strutinsky had to defend Kuznetsov's good name from the creators of "nationalist interpretations of war."
Strutinsky said: “Some people call Kuznetsov a terrorist. But Her Majesty History honors accuracy. And also - justice. I went with Kuznetsov on reconnaissance, every time - to certain death. And while I breathe, I will remain a living witness to the good name of our intelligence officer - the son of the Russian people, the son of the Ukrainian people”.
… It doesn’t matter that in the year of his 90th birthday they didn’t talk or write much about him. He is a personality of such a scale that he will remind of himself, perhaps for many years, until a new victory.
He was a writer, author of a series of books on the war in Western Ukraine. He gave interviews. Infrequently. But he did. When it was needed. His judgments about the period of modern history are fiery! Sometimes they are relentlessly hammered.
Here are some of his comments on a topic that has been and remains extremely relevant. In one of his last interviews, in 2003, when asked what worries him most, Nikolai Vladimirovich answered: “I am worried about the stable confrontation between Ukraine and Galicia for national and religious reasons. I am a native of the western region of Ukraine, and I am upset and ashamed that my fellow countrymen, Ukrainian nationalists, Galician nationalists, day and night preach reactionary and destructive ideas of nationalism … The artificially inflated language problem brings enormous psychological, moral and economic harm. Historically established bilingualism is an objective and progressive reality. The Russian language is the language of international communication, and attempts to eradicate it, to restrict its use are clearly reactionary.
If the Golitsi nationalists and their accomplices from among the former high-ranking functionaries of the CPSU and the state apparatus do not stop nationalist domestic and foreign policy, then there will never be any Unity, Sobornost, Zlagoda and Peace in Ukraine …"
In Cherkassy, where Nikolai Strutinsky lived in recent years, they remember him as a kind and sympathetic person. He helped the hospital, helped veterans to solve social problems. Nikolai Vladimirovich was friends with humor. When asked how he relates to the idea of renaming Lermontov Street into Dudayev Street in Lviv, he replied: "It surprises me - why Galician nationalists decided to rename only one street in honor of the thug Dudayev, and not the whole city."
His opinion about the vitality of nationalist ideas in Ukraine is as follows: “Nationalist policy is not capable of consolidating society, people and ensuring the normal development of the state. All nationalism is flawed in its essence, Galician nationalism is especially reactionary, destructive and hopeless. Until the people understand this, as long as they succumb to deception, zombies, and support the Galician nationalists, there will be no improvement in life … I thought a lot about the reasons for the confrontation between Galicia and Ukraine. There are many such reasons …
Galicia, unfortunately, did not become a true Ukraine, since for about six hundred years it was cut off from Ukraine and the Galicians were exposed to the influence of the authorities of Austria-Hungary, Poland, Germany, the Vatican, who tried to educate them in the spirit of national hostility to Russia and Orthodoxy …"
Nikolai Vladimirovich Strutinsky (1920-2003) is not widely remembered in the year of his 90th birthday. It seems that they do not remember, in particular, for this reason: his war for Ukraine is not over yet.
