Alexander Matrosov is known to most of us as a hero of the Great Patriotic War, who covered the enemy's embrasure with his chest. However, some facts from his biography are still poorly understood. Few people know that even before the onset of majority Matrosov was convicted by the court and served his sentence in one of the children's labor colonies. What crime did the future hero commit?
Nimble fellow
As the official version says, Alexander Matrosov was born in February 1924 in Dnepropetrovsk. The boy grew up active, agile and lively. The mother, looking at her son, often said that he would grow up either a fine fellow or a criminal.
At a very young age, Sasha was left without a mother. They lived poorly with my father, sometimes there was not even enough for food. Therefore, sometimes they went together to beg from the neighbors.
Soon the father had a second, and then a third wife. Almost no one paid attention to the boy, he was left to himself, lived from hand to mouth, wandered. Naturally, such a family environment did not have the best effect on the formation of a young person's personality.
Not wanting to stay with his father and stepmother any longer, Matrosov leaves home. According to one version, the woman herself got rid of her stepson in order to get rid of the extra "parasite".
Little Sasha, after a series of wanderings, ends up in a children's reception center through the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) in the city of Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk Region. And then, in February 1938, he was assigned to the Ivanovo orphanage of a special regime.
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But something went wrong. Either relations with peers because of Sasha's violent and wayward character did not work out for him, or the living conditions did not suit him. Soon he escapes back to the Ulyanovsk receiver, but after three days the rebel is returned back.
For two years
In 1939, Sasha graduated from high school, after which he got to a car repair plant in Kuibyshev (now Samara). But he didn't like it there either. Smoke, soot - such a freedom-loving adventurer Matrosov did not like it. He leaves the factory for the first time, but he is caught and taken to the police.
Sasha escapes a second time, he is found again, but already in Saratov. They took from Matrosov a subscription to leave the city within 24 hours, but he violated it and continued to be in Saratov.
After that, a criminal case was opened against the future hero. The trial of the people's court took place on October 8, 1940. 16-year-old Alexander was found guilty of violating the passport regime and sentenced to two years in prison under Article 192 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
He was sent to serve his sentence in a children's labor colony in Ufa. Matrosov arrived there at the end of April 1941, two months before the start of the war.
At first in the colony, the young man still showed a wayward character. So, soon the administration of the correctional institution found out that a group of minors, including Sailors, was preparing an escape. But only the organizer was punished, the future hero himself did not even receive disciplinary sanctions.
On the contrary, he began to improve, showed interest in work, becoming a locksmith's apprentice. For exemplary behavior, on March 15, 1942, he was appointed assistant educator of the colony.
To freedom, to the front
But Matrosov’s stay in the colony wasn’t cut off, so he did it “from ring to bell”. He was released at the end of September 1942, and immediately after that he went to the infantry school near Orenburg. There, the now adult guy was accepted into the Komsomol.
In January 1943 Matrosov was already on the Kalinin Front. And on February 27, he accomplishes his famous feat, rushing to the embrasure of the German bunker, which made it possible for his comrades to attack the enemy stronghold.
The feat of the 19-year-old Red Army soldier was widely covered in newspapers and magazines, poems were written about him. Gradually, the image of a young patriot became the most important part of Soviet patriotic mythology. It is clear that they preferred not to remember the defamatory moments in the hero's biography, especially since in May 1967 the Supreme Court of the USSR canceled the sentence to Matrosov.
Ivan Proshkin