The Russian army has a unique tradition - the enrollment of a soldier forever in the unit's lists. Such an honorary award is used for those killed in the performance of combat missions.
The procedure for venerating eternal soldiers is strictly spelled out in the general military charter of the Armed Forces. At the evening check-up, the name of the eternally enrolled person is always read out first, a response sounds to him: "He died a heroic death in the battle for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland."
The tradition of "eternal soldiers" originated in 1840 and was used infrequently - by 1909 there were 10 of them in the Russian army. However, the value of this award for soldiers and officers was so high that some unit commanders issued similar orders in the early 1920s already in the Soviet army.
The official revival of the tradition took place in 1943, when Alexander Matrosov was enlisted forever in the lists of the 1st company of the 254th Guards Regiment. According to the biographical reference book, compiled in 1990 by Alexander Zaitsev, Ivan Roshchin and Valentin Solovyov, by the end of World War II there were about three hundred and fifty “eternal soldiers”; by the beginning of the 1990s, there were 412 of them. But the feat of Arkhip Osipov, the first eternal soldier of Russia, was not even noticed by the authorities at first.
Arkhip Osipov - known and unknown
We know little about the first "eternal soldier" of Russia. Born in the village of Kamenka, Lipetsk uyezd, Kiev province, into a family of serfs, around 1820 he was recruited, in the second year of service for some reason … he fled from the unit. The future hero is saved from punishment by thousands of gauntlets, after which they usually did not remain alive, by the fact that he returned to his place of service voluntarily.
Then Arkhip served regularly, participated in the wars with Turkey and Persia, was awarded medals, and a special sleeve patch for 15 years of blameless service. By the spring of 1840, as part of the Tengin regiment, a soldier was in the fortification of Mikhailovskoye of the Black Sea line.
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A series of Russian fortifications in the Black Sea region were built in the 20-30s of the XIX century, when after the Russian-Turkish war Sukhum and the entire coast of Abkhazia retreated to Russia. These places were restless, the highlanders constantly raided the Russian units. Added difficulty and climate.
Throughout the winter of 1839-1840, epidemics did not stop in the garrison. And on April 3, Mikhailovskoye, where hardly a third of the soldiers remained in the ranks, more than ten thousand highlanders attacked at the same time.
One by one, they broke through the lines of the Russian defense. Finally, when the enemy entered the village, there was a powerful explosion. The cellar flew into the air, where more than two hundred poods of grenades and gunpowder were stored. The cellar, and at the same time himself and many enemies, blew up Arkhip Osipov.
There are several versions as to how exactly this happened. One by one, the hero was sitting in the cellar itself and fired at the ammunition, on the other, he threw a burning log into the barrels of gunpowder, which the highlanders had already begun to pull out. However, we will never know the exact circumstances of what happened, because the literal stories of Arkhip's comrades have not reached us.
A month after the events, a draft decree of Nicholas I was drawn up, in which an example of courage was named … the commander of the garrison, staff captain Liko. And only later, when the surviving participants in the events were ransomed from captivity, justice triumphed.
The headquarters captain really could have proposed a plan with the explosion of the cellar, but Arkhip Osipov carried it out, Liko himself was seriously wounded at the time of the explosion and later died. In the fall of 1840, a decree was signed by the Minister of War, Count Alexander Chernyshev, which read:
"To keep the name of [Osipov] forever in the lists of the 1st grenadier company of the Tenginsky regiment, considering him the first private, and at all roll calls, if this name is asked, the first private to follow him will answer:" He died for the glory of Russian weapons in the Mikhailovsky fortification."
Did the deceased hero really planned the feat in advance, or acted in the momentary circumstances of the battle? Was he asking “while dooming himself to such a glorious death, his comrades remember his work if any of them survived”, as stated in the order of Chernyshev, or the rise of a simple soldier could be part of a propaganda policy, as the author of the essay on him in the "Independent Military Review" Alexander Pronin? We will not know this. But the tradition of eternal soldiers, born in the century before last, is still alive.
In memory of the events that took place, the Mikhailovskoye fortification was later renamed the village of Arkhipo-Osipovka. There is a large worship cross that has survived to this day. The monument to Arkhip Osipov and Captain Liko in Gelendzhik was destroyed after 1917.
Daria Mendeleeva