My long acquaintance with the brave pilots of our country (Twice Heroes of the Soviet Union, Air Marshals P. S. Kutakhov, E. Ya. Savitsky, A. N. on the idea of sharing with the readers of "Military Review" their views. The feat in peaceful labor and during the period of hostilities is always accomplished by selfless people who love their Motherland and family.
I recall a letter from junior lieutenant Ivan Sidorovich Kolosov, the commander of a tank platoon, which was discovered in the 70s near Vyazma. In October 1941, units of the Red Army, including 9 tank brigades, were surrounded and defeated there. Lieutenant Kolosov, apparently, understood and realized that it would not be possible to get through to his own, there was practically no fuel in the tank, the rest of the vehicles were knocked out. Then the lieutenant drove the tank deep into the forest, buried two crew members killed in battle, closed the hatches and wrote a farewell letter to his beloved girlfriend Vara. When the search engines in the 70s found a car that had grown into the ground due to time in the thicket of the forest, they opened the hatch. In the place of the driver's mechanic, they found the remains of a tankman, it was Lieutenant Kolosov. His tablet contained an unsent letter to Vara and also an unsent letter from another crew member to his wife, in which the tanker regrets that he will not be able to see his daughter, who looks like a dandelion.
Returning to Leningrad in 1944 after breaking the blockade, in our apartment we found two letters that my father had not sent to us for evacuation, too. Apparently, my father sometimes ran home from service, where he wrote them, but for some reason did not have time to send them to us in Siberia. Father died on December 27, 1941 on the "Road of Life", which he created. When I grew up, my mother read them to me, I remember the contents of the letters even now, then they were lost. After all, time took its toll.
In Russia, patriotism was inherent in all generations of our citizens, and the forms of patriotism depended on time. It is known that the governments of Russia at different times did not always pay attention to the development of patriotism, but, nevertheless, it was, and this sometimes causes bewilderment and interest. If we consider patriotism from a scientific standpoint, and not from the standpoint of liberals, then patriotism can be assessed as a moral and political principle, which consists in love for the Fatherland, relatives and the ability to subordinate one's own interests to this concept, up to self-sacrifice. In the context of the creation of national states, patriotism becomes an integral part of national consciousness for almost the entire population. Therefore, the phenomenon of self-sacrifice of the elderly in the Iran-Iraq conflict when overcoming enemy minefields was easily explained. In states with a different social formation, this feeling is not perceived by some part of the population, then it is possible to explain the appearance of terrorists, revolutionaries, traitors and all their accomplices. In the scientific literature there is a classification of patriotism as: polis, imperial, ethnic, state and leavened. Patriotism is manifested in a very indicative and peculiar way in Ukraine at the present time. We will not touch the classification of patriotism identified by scientists, but we will focus on instructive and significant examples of the patriotism of our people.
What feelings did one of the richest women in Russia A. D. Vyaltseva, when she formed an ambulance train at her own expense, took out and saved thousands of lives of Russian soldiers and officers in 1904 during the Russian-Japanese war?
Then this Russian woman established more than 10 scholarships for gifted university students for the development of science and industry in Russia. Such assistance to students allowed them to study at technical faculties, giving all their strength to the study of exact sciences. Also A. D. Vyaltseva at her own expense built hospitals and houses in villages for fire victims in Russia. Therefore, when she died, more than 200 thousand Petersburgers went to see her off on her last journey to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. She was loved by the people, her origin is from a simple family.
Which of our oligarchs will dare to such feats today? I think no one. Concurrently, I am the head of a special department at the St. Petersburg University of Aerospace Instrumentation and I see those students who are worthy of their level of education, the desire to work for the good of the country, with similar attention from industry.
In the initial period of the Great Patriotic War, units of the Red Army, having withstood the onslaught of the fascist troops, went on the offensive in the Leningrad and Moscow directions in December. Making a feat of labor, the people of the USSR were able to relocate hundreds of enterprises to the eastern regions of the country and start producing products needed by the front. In the same period, a patriotic movement of assistance to the front appeared by purchasing military equipment with personal savings: tanks, aircraft, artillery installations and warships. Ferapont Petrovich Golovaty bought a Yak-1 fighter plane with his savings, although he had a family of 11 people in his house.
In total, over the years of the Great Patriotic War, home front workers bought 118 billion rubles worth of military equipment with personal savings. And this is when the monthly wage of a worker is 700 rubles. Children also raised funds for the purchase of weapons.
Soviet pilots have always been distinguished by their perseverance in air battles with the Nazis and in the destruction of his military equipment. So they were brought up by the Motherland. Today the liberals are trying to present our history to us as the history of the people of Russia enslaved by someone. But could slaves be able to work so selflessly and fight for the independence of their country? The heroic deeds of the people are practically not reflected in our media, although patriotic education is extremely necessary. And no answer is given to the falsification of the country's history by the liberals. Today we see the result of such a policy on the example of Ukraine.
During the Great Patriotic War, our pilots, while performing combat missions, made self-sacrifice and made 595 air rams of fascist aircraft, 506 rams of ground fascist equipment and 16 rams of fascist ships. They carried out such military attacks in the absence of any other opportunity to inflict damage on the Nazis. Vsevolod Alexandrovich Shiryaev was born in St. Petersburg in 1911. He went through the path of becoming like an ordinary boy from a working-class family. In 1933 he became a military pilot, fought with P. S. Kutakhov in 1939-1940. Since June 1941 V. A. Shiryaev is fighting the Nazis. In 1942 he was the commander of the 2nd squadron of the 806th air assault regiment (commander Major N. Eskov) of the 206th air division (commander Colonel K. Chubchenkov) of the 8th air army (commander Major General T. Khryukin). V. A. Shiryaev at Stalingrad. On September 4, 1942, at the head of his squadron, he flew to destroy fascist equipment in the area of the village of Khulkhuta in the Yashkul region of Kalmykia. When entering the target, a fragment of an anti-aircraft shell hit the squadron commander's plane, the plane caught fire. Apparently, the commander realized that he could not hold out for his own, and then, leaving the group's battle formation, he sent the burning car to the accumulation of fascist equipment. This is how the slave V. A. reported to the regiment commander. Shiryaev, when the planes returned from the combat mission: “From a height of 200 meters, the squadron recorded Nazi tanks, which attacked the height occupied by our troops. At the command of the squadron commander, we covered this target with rockets and bombs, however, the commander's plane caught fire from being hit by a fragment of an anti-aircraft shell. The squadron heard the command of the squadron commander: "Attack!" The commander's plane lay on the opposite course and maneuvered to shoot down the flames. It failed. Then the squadron commander directed the burning car to a new group of fascist tanks."
After the Great Patriotic War, our pilots, performing flight missions on supersonic jet aircraft, deliberately rammed, since they could not fail to complete the mission. It was a matter of their honor. The MiG-21SM aircraft was equipped with an on-board multifunctional radio-technical complex created by JSC VNIIRA (NII-33), which precisely guided this aircraft to the point of interception of the RF-4C reconnaissance aircraft. The intruder was already approaching the state border, and interception on foreign territory was unacceptable. Shooting from the cannons of the MiG-21SM aircraft no longer guaranteed its destruction on our territory, and the order of the commander "Stop the enemy's flight at any cost" had to be fulfilled. And then Captain G. N. Eliseev decides to destroy the intruder by ramming him with his plane. This is how the patriots of the country follow orders.
