Russia celebrated Victory Day with military parades, processions of the "Immortal Regiment" in most large and not-so-large cities of the country, festive festivities and artillery salutes. The few surviving participants of the Great Patriotic War were very pleased to see that they are remembered, loved and respected even more than seven decades after the Great Victory. On the eve of Victory Day, an event took place in Rostov-on-Don, which, of course, has not only urban and regional significance, but is also very important for the whole country. In the park named after the 353rd Rifle Division, a monument was unveiled to Alexei Berest, a legendary officer, a real hero of the Great Patriotic War, who in 1945 led an assault group that raised a red banner over the Berlin Reichstag. The post-war years of Aleksey Berest's life were associated with the Rostov region and Rostov-on-Don. Here this amazing man, whose fate can be called both heroic and tragic, and performed the last feat in his life.
Unfortunately, the name of Alexei Berest is known to very few people outside the Rostov region. But for many Rostovites the name of Berest is truly sacred. Back in 1945, 24-year-old junior lieutenant Alexei Berest, who served as deputy battalion commander for political affairs, commanded a unit that raised the red banner of Victory over the Reichstag. This year, on March 9, Alexei Berest would have turned 95 years old. He was born on March 9, 1921 in the village of Goryaystovka, Akhtyrsky district, Sumy region, into a large peasant family. Since October 1939, having signed up as a volunteer in the Red Army, Berest was in military service, took part in the Soviet-Finnish war. Berest met the Great Patriotic War as a private, then was promoted to corporal, and in 1943, among the best soldiers, was selected to study at the Leningrad Military-Political School, after which he was assigned to the position of deputy battalion commander for political affairs. 1st Infantry Regiment of the 150th Infantry Division.
On April 30, 1945, by order of the first commandant of the Reichstag, commander of the 756th rifle regiment Zinchenko F. M., junior lieutenant Alexei Berest headed the implementation of the combat mission of hoisting the banner of the military council of the 3rd shock army on the dome of the Reichstag. For this operation he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. How this historical event took place has been written in many books and articles, but it will never be superfluous to once again recall the feat of the heroes - the Red Army men. Bursting into the Reichstag building, Soviet soldiers came under enemy fire. Berest managed to hide behind a bronze statue. The Germans fired so hard that a hand fell off the statue. The junior lieutenant immediately got his bearings - he grabbed a piece of broken off bronze and threw it in the direction from which the machine-gun fire was being fired. The machine gunner quieted down - apparently thought that a Soviet officer had thrown a grenade. While the fire stopped, Berest and his soldiers rushed forward, but the stairs upward were destroyed. Then Alexei Berest, who was almost two meters tall, himself became a "ladder" - Mikhail Egorov and Meliton Kantaria climbed up on his shoulders. Berest was the first to climb into the attic of the Reichstag. The red banner of Victory was tied with soldiers' belts to the bronze leg of a horse.
In those epoch-making days for our country, hoisting the banner of Victory was not the only feat of Alexei Prokopyevich Berest. On the night of May 2, 1945, as a man of a prominent, representative appearance, the Soviet command authorized him to negotiate surrender with the commanders of the German unit defending the Reichstag. The arrogant Hitlerite officers did not want to enter into negotiations with Soviet commanders below the rank of colonel. But in the unit that was the first to break into the Reichstag, only the battalion commander, Captain Stepan Neustroev, was the senior in rank - a man of small stature, whom the Germans would not have believed that he could be a "real colonel." Therefore, Berest was sent for negotiations - a tall guy with a stately military bearing. From the political officer of the battalion, the "colonel" was anywhere, even if he actually wore the shoulder straps of a junior lieutenant. Indeed, the German officers had no doubts that they were dealing with a colonel, and even Berest's age was not surprising - firstly, the junior lieutenant looked older than his years, and secondly, anything happens in war, and twenty-five-year-old colonels are not often, but met. Berest gave the Nazis two hours of time to think about surrender, after which he went back to the position of his unit. When Alexey Prokopyevich was moving away towards the Soviet positions, a shot rang out. The zampolit didn't even turn around. When Berest reached his own, he saw that Hitler's sniper was aiming at his head, but hit his cap and shot it through. The Germans, who saw how the Soviet officer, who had a bullet that pierced his cap only a few centimeters from his head, did not even flinch, the "young colonel" aroused even greater respect.
Of course, junior lieutenant Alexei Berest should have become a Hero of the Soviet Union 70 years ago. After all, the rest of the participants in the storming of the Reichstag, who planted the banner of Victory on it, were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In May 1946, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR published a decree “On conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on the officer and non-commissioned officers of the armed forces of the USSR, who planted the Victory Banner over the Reichstag”. Captains Stepan Neustroev and Vasily Davydov, Senior Lieutenant Konstantin Samsonov, Sergeant Mikhail Egorov, Junior Sergeant Meliton Kantaria received the Gold Star of the Hero. But junior lieutenant Berest was spared the award. They say that Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov himself contributed to this - he was very cool about political workers, and Berest, as you know, served as deputy commander of a rifle battalion for political affairs. According to another version, Berest was refused because of his uncomfortable nature. Whatever it was, but Berest did not become a Hero of the Soviet Union. Formally. After all, with his life he proved that he is a real hero - not only of the country, but of humanity as a whole. These were his actions.
Alexei Prokopyevich was not lucky with his post-war career. He went to the reserve as a senior lieutenant from the post of political commander of the communications center of one of the units of the Black Sea Fleet. After demobilization from Sevastopol, where he spent his last years of service, Berest moved to the Rostov region. Here, in the village of Pokrovskoye, he headed the cinema department. But in 1953 Berest was arrested. It was a dark and confusing matter. They say that Alexei Prokopyevich was framed, and during interrogation he punched the investigator in the face - he insulted a participant in the war. Birch bark was accused of embezzlement and sentenced to ten years. But Alexey Prokopyevich served half the appointed time - he was released under an amnesty. From Pokrovsky, the Berest family moved to Rostov-on-Don. Of course, Alexey Prokopyevich could no longer work in administrative positions with a criminal record and a real five-year sentence. He first got a job as a loader, then - at the famous Selmash - Rostov plant of agricultural machinery, as a sandblaster in a steel workshop. The family settled in the village of Frunze, which is on the eastern outskirts of Rostov-on-Don, in the area of the modern airport. They lived modestly, while the doors of Alexei Prokopyevich's house were always open to everyone in need - he never refused to help his neighbors, colleagues at work, or even casual acquaintances. Aleksey Prokopyevich himself, until the end of his life, as people who knew him recall, retained a certain resentment against the authorities, which never appreciated his merits, moreover, they hid him in prison.
Alexei Prokopyevich Berest performed his last feat 25 years after the storming of the Reichstag. For a quarter of a century after the war, despite all the difficulties of life, he never ceased to be a hero, a Man with a capital letter. In 1970, on November 3, Aleksey Berest was walking with his grandson - he was standing at the crossing over the railway tracks. The train was approaching. And suddenly there was a loud cry: "Train!" An electric train approached and someone from the crowd of people who had rushed towards it, who were waiting on the platform, pushed a little five-year-old girl on the way. Alexey Prokopyevich threw himself on the tracks. He managed to push the girl off the canvas, but did not have time to jump out himself. The train threw Berest to the platform. An ambulance was called, Berest was taken to the hospital, but they could not save Alexei Prokopyevich. The hero of the storming of the Reichstag died, and he was only forty-nine years old. Alexei Prokopyevich Berest was buried in a small cemetery in Aleksandrovka - a village that became part of Rostov-on-Don, since this cemetery was the closest to the village of Frunze, where the hero's family lived.
For a long time, they tried not to advertise the name of Berest across the country. In the Soviet period of Russian history, they were embarrassed to nominate Berest for the role of a "hero - symbol" - after all, he was a complex person with a difficult biography. Nevertheless, a prison term also took place in his life. And it turned out inconveniently - as it is, the Soviet government deprived such a person with an award in 1945. True, in Rostov-on-Don, Alexei Prokopyevich Berest was always respected. One of the Rostov streets in the village of Selmash, as well as school No. 7, was named after Aleksey Berest. Although at the country level Berest was not often spoken about, in Rostov-on-Don even the local party bosses honored his memory. At the grave of Alexei Prokopyevich, solemn ceremonies of admission to the pioneers took place. On Victory Day, residents of Alexandrovka and other districts of the city gathered here, war veterans spoke. But the title of Hero was not awarded to Berest even in post-Soviet Russia. This is doubly offensive, because back in 2005, Aleksey Prokopyevich Berest, who was born in the Sumy region of the Ukrainian SSR, received the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine. It turns out that in Ukraine his memory turned out to be more respected than in Russia, where he spent most of his life and where he died heroically saving a small child.
For decades, caring Rostovites do not lay their hands, but do everything possible to force the authorities to appreciate the merits of Alexei Prokopyevich and confer upon him the posthumous title of Hero of Russia. Thus, Nikolai Shevkunov from Rostov in February 2015 filed a petition addressed to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, in which he asked to confer the title of Hero of Russia posthumously on Alexei Prokopyevich Berest. For Nikolai Shevkunov, perpetuating the memory of the hero is a matter of honor, because it was Alexei Prokopyevich Berest who accepted him as a pioneer back in 1963, more than fifty years ago. In addition to the request to confer the title of Hero of Russia, the petition also contained a request to erect a monument to Alexei Berest in Rostov-on-Don, the city where the last years of the life of the legendary participant in the storming of the Reichstag passed.
And so, in May 2016, one of the requests of the Rostovites came true. In the park of the 353rd Rifle Division, despite a rainy day, over a hundred people gathered. Among them were representatives of the administration of the Rostov region and Rostov-on-Don - the governor of the Rostov region Vasily Golubev, the chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the region Viktor Deryabkin, the chairman of the Committee on Legislation Irina Rukavishnikova. The daughter of Aleksei Prokopyevich Beresta Irina Alekseevna Berest, schoolchildren of the city and cadets of the cadet corps, not indifferent townspeople were present. As it became known, employees of the Rostov Institute for the Protection of Entrepreneurship initiated the creation of the monument to Alexei Berest. The full-length sculpture project was prepared by the famous sculptor Anatoly Sknarin, and the cost of the project, paid for from private voluntary donations, amounted to about two million rubles. The monument depicts Alexei Prokopyevich Berest as the standard-bearer of Victory.
In addition to the opening of the monument, on behalf of the head of the administration of Rostov-on-Don, Sergei Gorban, the production center “Mediapark“South Region - DSTU”together with the Department for Information Policy and Interaction with the Mass Media of the Administration of Rostov-on-Don created a documentary film“Three feat of Alexei Berest”, which tells about the difficult life of a national hero. The picture includes shots telling about the creation of the monument to Alexei Prokopyevich, the celebration of the 95th anniversary of his birth, the memories of Irina Alekseevna Berest - the hero's daughter - about her wonderful father.
The Governor of the Rostov Region Vasily Golubev emphasized that “with the opening of the monument to Berest, historical justice has triumphed. His feat ended the victorious war with the defeat of the fascist troops in their lair. After the war, he accomplished another feat: at the age of 49, saving a 5-year-old girl who fell in front of the train, he paid with his life. Chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the Rostov Region Viktor Deryabkin, speaking at the opening of the monument, said that the deputies of the Rostov Region appealed to the Chairman of the Presidential Commission on State Awards with a request to restore historical justice and confer the posthumous title of Hero of Russia on Alexei Prokopyevich Berest. So now it's all up to the federal authorities.
