Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Mikhail Moshkin and Daniil Pelymov
[REGNUM] On July 17, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree awarding the title Hero of Russia. Such documents are not uncommon, especially with the start of the Central Military District. But in this case, the award found the hero after 80 years. The highest distinction was posthumously received by Alexei Berest, commander of the combat group of the 150th Rifle Division, which captured the Reichstag on April 30, 1945.
Sergeant Mikhail Yegorov and Junior Sergeant Meliton Kantaria, who hoisted the Victory Banner, served under Lieutenant Berest. Both soldiers received the stars of Heroes of the Soviet Union in 1946. But why did Berest not receive the award?
Before answering this question, let us recall the chronology and context of events. At the end of the Berlin Offensive Operation, by the end of April 1945, units of the 79th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Shock Army of the 1st Belorussian Front occupied the Moabit area in the center of Berlin, on the northern bank of the Spree River.
The Red Army came very close to the center of administrative buildings that the Nazis had turned into fortifications equipped for long-term defense: the headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Swiss embassy, and the parliament building, the Reichstag.
Among the participants in the heaviest battles of the last days of the war was Lieutenant Aleksey Prokofievich Berest, who turned 24 in March 1945. A native of the village of Goryaistovka in the Kharkov province (now in the Akhtyrsky district of the Sumy region), he was an exemplary "man of the new formation" - an orphan from an orphanage, a tractor driver, an employee of the Kharkov locomotive plant. He volunteered for the Red Army in 1939, participated in the Soviet-Finnish war, went through the Great Patriotic War from start to finish, rising from private to lieutenant, deputy battalion commander for political affairs.
On April 28, Major General Semyon Perevertkin, commander of the 79th Corps, set the task: to drive the enemy out of the Reichstag using the forces of the 150th, 171st and 207th rifle divisions. Two days later, after the heaviest fighting and under the cover of artillery, the rifle units approached the main entrance to the building. The first Red Banner was hoisted at one of the columns near the stairs of this entrance.
The commander of the 150th Rifle Division, Vasily Shatilov, later recalled :
"The figures of people scattered across the square rose, ran, fell, rose again, or remained motionless. And they all gathered, as if to the two poles of a magnet, to the main entrance and to the southwest corner of the building, behind which was... the deputy entrance. I saw how the Banner suddenly turned red like a scarlet spot above the steps by the right column."
This first flag at the entrance to the Reichstag was installed by Private Grigory Bulatov and Lieutenant Rakhimzhan Koshkarbayev on April 30 at 2:25 p.m. At the same time, a group of fighters broke through a breach in the northwestern wall of the building (made by sappers of the 171st Division).
Many sources cite the testimony of Alexander Bessarab, a participant in the assault, a major at the end of the war and commander of the 420th separate anti-tank fighter division. According to him, the infantrymen took small red flags or pieces of red cloth with them, which they hung up to mark the floors of the Reichstag that had been captured.
Numerous testimonies from front-line soldiers describe fierce exchanges of fire on each of the stairwells, littered with debris and glass that had fallen from the broken dome. Several groups of fighters managed to drive the enemy off the roof of the building. According to a number of testimonies, three red banners were installed on the roof, but not at the highest point, which were knocked down on the night of April 29-30, when long-range German artillery was working on the building. At the same time, the Reichstag dome was destroyed, leaving only the frame.
On April 30, the commander of the 756th Rifle Regiment of the 150th Idritskaya Rifle Division, Colonel Fyodor Zinchenko, tasked the deputy commander for political affairs of one of the battalions, Lieutenant Berest, with heading a group of standard-bearers tasked with raising the division's assault flag at the highest possible point in the building. Berest was "assigned" fighters Yegorov and Kantaria.
The roof was under constant direct fire from the enemy. Egorov and Kantaria lay down under one of the statues on the eastern pediment of the building (well known from the textbook photo by Yevgeny Khaldey ) and could not get out for three hours, until the fighters of the rifle company of Senior Sergeant Ilya Syanov came up and covered the standard-bearers…
In a report from the commander of the 3rd Shock Army, Colonel General Vasily Kuznetsov, to the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army on July 2, 1945, the following version was presented:
"On April 30, 1945, at 14:25, the soldiers of Senior Sergeant Syanov's company fought their way up the stairs to the roof of the building and reached the dome of the Reichstag. The brave soldiers, Communist Lieutenant Berest, Komsomol member of the Red Army Yegorov and non-party junior sergeant Kantaria, installed the banner, and the proud flag of the Soviet Union, a symbol of our great victory, was raised over the building of the German parliament."
In reality, judging by the recollections of those who took part in the assault, everything was different.
"THE ORDER WAS NOT FULLY CARRIED OUT"
Not at 14:25, but at about 22:00 on April 30, Yegorov and Kantaria, covered by their commander Berest, secured the assault flag of the 150th Idritskaya Rifle Division on the equestrian sculpture of Wilhelm I on the eastern pediment.
Shards of broken glass dug into their palms - it would seem that after the wound, the hands could be healed, but Egorov and Kantaria refused the operation, keeping the scars on their hands as a memory of the storming of Berlin. "Blood was flowing from their mouths, ears, noses, and their hands were a bloody mess," war correspondent Lazar Magrachev described the condition of the heroes.
But the task set by Colonel Zinchenko was different - to install it higher, on the frame of the dome. Fighting in the building and shelling from outside continued. A number of publications said that on the night of May 1-2, Lieutenant Berest, dressed in the uniform of a Red Army colonel, negotiated surrender with the remnants of the Reichstag garrison.
According to Colonel Zinchenko's recollections, on May 2, after suppressing the German resistance in the building, he summoned Yegorov and Kantaria and ordered them to "complete" the order. Together with two sergeants, he climbed one of the heavily damaged stairs leading to the dome. Then, according to Zinchenko, things went like this:
“ Well, dear comrades,” I addressed my companions. “On April 30, you did not fully carry out my order. You did not install the banner on the dome. Complete the fulfillment!..” “Yes, comrade colonel, complete the fulfillment of the order,” Yegorov and Kantaria answered cheerfully. And a few minutes later the banner was already fluttering over the dome…”.
As early as May 3, 1945, photographs of the burning Reichstag with the Soviet flag taken by the outstanding photographer Khaldei appeared on the pages of the newspaper Pravda, becoming one of the most recognizable images of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
THE CURSE OF MARSHAL ZHUKOV
After the capitulation of the Third Reich, a high commission investigated which of the divisions that stormed the Reichstag were the first to reach the roof of the Imperial Diet. Based on the results of the July report to the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, Sergeant Yegorov and Junior Sergeant Kantaria were nominated for the highest award – the title of Hero of the Soviet Union – and indeed received it (they were awarded the Gold Star medal on May 8, 1946).
Lieutenant Aleksey Berest was also nominated for an award on August 3, 1946. However, a couple of weeks later, instead of the Order of Lenin with the Hero's Star, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. This is why descendants and historians were perplexed.
Sergeant Yegorov's daughter, Irina Dorozhkina, said that the standard-bearers even tried to hand over their "Stars" to the commander, thus showing solidarity. "The guys took off the stars and gave them to Berest. But he answered: "I need my own," she recalled.
Why did the commission shortchange the hero? There were many versions.
And here three circumstances came together. First, he was a party soldier – a political officer, which meant that his services were assessed differently at the divisional level. As reported in the archive of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a copy of the award documents testifies:
“The lieutenant was nominated for the title of Hero together with Yegorov and Kantaria… But since Berest was a political officer, his fate was decided at the divisional level. There, the award was reduced to the Order of the Red Banner. Colleagues from the political department believed: if you are a communist, your duty is to organize the raising [of the Banner].”
Simply put, fellow party members thought that such a feat was a duty for a communist intelligence officer, and therefore he supposedly should have received a more modest award. Historian Yuri Galkin calls this argument "Marshal Zhukov's curse" - a hint at the formal attitude of the high command, but it is the reduction in the award list that is documented.
Secondly, years later, the Soviet government was not particularly sad about the reassessment of history. "The official answer was - we will not rewrite history, the documents are classified," recalls Egorov's daughter. That is, the explanation boiled down to secrecy and "not touching previous decisions." Only now, after the collapse of the USSR and the return of the archives, has it become known that Berest was initially nominated for the highest award, but the decision was not assigned to him.
Moreover, he was demobilized in 1948 for “immoral behavior.” What is this stain on the reputation that has ruined the biography of a heroic officer?
FIRED FOR LOVE, CONVICTED, ACQUITTED
Bigamy is mentioned in official documents. The inquiry protocols of August 11, 1948 testified: Lieutenant Berest, having been in a registered marriage with citizen Elena Akimovna Kotenko since September 16, 1939, without dissolving this marriage, entered into a second marriage with citizen Lyudmila Fedorovna Yevseeva on January 8, 1946.
The Court of Honor of Junior Officers at the Communications Department of the Black Sea Fleet considered this an act that disgraced the honor of a serviceman. From the context, it can be understood that this is not about adultery, but about the fact that Berest neglected divorce procedures. An offense, but not the most serious.
However, in the characterization given by Berest's immediate commander, the lieutenant was also accused of drinking with subordinates, publicly complaining about the difficult financial situation of junior officers, and most importantly, refusing to attend the University of Marxism-Leninism.
Dismissed from service, Berest went to the homeland of his second wife Lyudmila - to the village of Pokrovskoye in the Neklinovsky district of the Rostov region. And here the former officer with a "stain" on his reputation again suffered misfortune. In Neklinovo, Berest worked as the director of the district cinematography department. The loss of property was discovered, and, contrary to the testimony of witnesses, the theft was blamed on the director. In April 1953, Alexei Prokofievich was sentenced to 10 years. But under the amnesty in connection with the death of Joseph Stalin, the term was "cut" in half - to five years. He was released on parole, having served less than three years.
Berest's honor was restored during the thaw - in the early 1960s, as someone innocent of theft, he was completely rehabilitated and reinstated in the party.
But he was never awarded the Hero title, and Yegorov and Kantaria's commander remained in the shadows. Aleksey Prokofievich worked in simple, inconspicuous positions: as a forwarder at a supply base, deputy head of a canteen, a fitter in a housing management boiler room, a loader at the Rostov confectionery factory...
He was brought back from oblivion by the war veteran writer Vasily Subbotin, who published the documentary story “ Colonel Berest ” in 1960, and another writer, a war veteran and prisoner of Nazi concentration camps, Igor Bondarenko, whose essay was published in 1961 by the magazine “Don”. But the official position could not be reversed – Berest was never included in the “face” of heroes along with Yegorov and Kantaria.
But raising the flag over the fallen Reichstag was not his last feat. On November 3, 1970, Rostov confectionery factory driver Alexei Berest died a heroic death.
"NON-HERO" WHO SACRIFICED HIS LIFE
Lyudmila Berestova recalled in one of her interviews: on this day, Alexey Prokofievich promised to pick up his grandson Alyosha from kindergarten.
"On the evening of November 3, I was at home with my daughter Ira. Suddenly, a neighbor from the second floor came running, holding Leshenka's hand. He said: "The train killed daddy." He always called Grandpa Leshenka "daddy...", - the hero's widow said.
According to Lyudmila Fyodorovna, the tragedy occurred on the railroad tracks in the industrial zone of Rostselmash. A crowd had formed at the crossing - they were waiting for a passing train. Suddenly, a scream of horror was heard: a little girl had fallen onto the tracks.
Eyewitnesses claimed that her drunk father accidentally pushed her. Aleksey Berest, leaving Lyosha in the care of people standing nearby, rushed to save someone else's child. He managed to snatch the girl from under the wheels of a speeding locomotive, but the last seconds before the train braked turned out to be fatal - Aleksey Fyodorovich died.
But the next part of the widow’s story seems “rather dark”: according to her, the girl saved by Berest was never “looked for”, and neither her relatives nor she herself, having become an adult, found the family of her savior.
Be that as it may, “Alexei Berest died as a hero,” says Dorozhkina, noting that Alexei Prokofievich did not require personal glory – he considered his feat to have taken place in itself.
MEMORY RECOVERY
Already in our days, the story of the hero of the storming of the Reichstag, ignored by the Soviet authorities, has been made the subject of political speculation in Ukraine. In 2005, with the rise to power of the nationalist Viktor Yushchenko, the "orange" authorities decided to remember Oleksiy Berest and award him the title of Hero of Ukraine.
There is great doubt that this was dictated by the desire to restore justice to an officer who participated in the decisive blow to German Nazism. After all, in 2007, Yushchenko awarded the same title of Hero of Ukraine to the commander-in-chief of the UPA Roman Shukhevych, who had also served the Nazis, and in 2010, Stepan Bandera was awarded the same "honor".
The soldier and officer of the Red Army, who fought in the entire Great Patriotic War, were to be presented as some kind of example of alleged discrimination against Ukrainians by "Muscovites". But the authorities, who consider Bandera's punishers heroes, failed to "privatize" the hero who fought for our common homeland.
For decades, historians, journalists and local historians fought for the recognition of Commander Yegorov and Kantaria as Heroes of Russia, the successor state to the Soviet Union.
A memorial plaque has been installed at the entrance to the Rostselmash plant where Berest died, and a bust of the hero has been installed on the plant grounds. A street in the Pervomaisky district of Rostov-on-Don is named after Alexei Berest.
In 2010-15, the commander of the standard-bearers was immortalized in Rostov, Volgograd-Stalingrad, the city of military glory Malgobek (Ingushetia) and in the hero city of Moscow. Back in 2010, with the participation of President Vladimir Putin, a monument "We were together in the fight against fascism" was opened on Poklonnaya Hill. In the part dedicated to the storming of the Reichstag, there is also an image of Lieutenant Alexei Berest.
Finally, historical memory has been completely restored: the war hero received the award he deserved 80 years after the Victory and almost 55 years after his death.
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