Gunner Alexander Tipanov
Alexander Feodorovich Tipanov, Hero of the Soviet Union When I was in school, every year on the eve of May 9 our class would take a walk to Tipanov Street. It was named after Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Feodorovich Tipanov, born 1924 in the village of Ustye, Sasovo region, Ryazan province. From 1943 he fought as gunner in the 191st Guards Regiment. To some extent, “gunner” meant kamakadze, because the Germans always tried to put them out first. Operation “January thunder” had begun—the liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade. On January 15, 1944, the 191st artillery division crossed over from the Pulkovo side to advance on Krasnoe Selo, breaking deeply through the enemy’s echelon defense.
On January 18, 1944, the division commenced fighting with the fascists on Lysaya Gora near Krasnoe Selo. Gunner Alexander Tipanov was in the advance guard, destroying the enemy soldiers. The attack stopped due to fire from an enemy pillbox. Alexander Tipanov tried to put down the fascist embankment with his artillery, but without success. Then he managed to crawl to the pillbox and launch hand grenades at it. The enemy fire fell silent for a moment, but then started up again. Then Alexander Tipanov threw himself on the embrasure and covered it with his own body. Thanks to his self-sacrificing feat, the 191 guard division was able to continue its attack and on January 19, 1944 it liberated Krasnoe Selo, where Alexander Feodorovich Tipanov was then buried. By decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on February 13, 1944, he was posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union, and streets are named after him in St. Petersburg, Ryazan, Sasovo, and Ustye.
The grave of A. F. Tipanov in Krasnoe Selo These are generally known facts. But only recently was a secret connected with the name of Alexander Feodorovich Tipanov revealed to me. According to the testimony of Fr. Nikolai Bondarev, the famous architect from Sasovo, Alexander Tipanov was a believing Christian raised in an Orthodox family. Moreover, in his childhood he also performed a sort of heroic feat: When in 1933 in his native village of Ustye the communists were destroying the St. Nicholas Church and burning icons in a bonfire, he grabbed an icon of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos from the flames. This was witnessed by Alexandra Feodorovich Tipanov’s mother and his godmother. Faith was the very core of Alexander Tipanov’s life, and in his final moment he fulfilled Christ’s commandment: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (Jn. 15:13).
Poet Mikhail Dudin
Poet Mikhail Alexandrovich Dudin Speaking of faith at war, it is worth recalling the remarkable frontline poet, Mikhail Alexandrovich Dudin, who fought from the very beginning of the war. He was the author of a number of wonderful poems, among which are such profound ones as “The ice floes on the Neva”:
It was 1944.
And I was fainting
From hunger,
From grief,
From longing.
But spring had come,
With little care
For these all these woes.
Cracked to pieces,
Like lumps of sugar,
Damp and porous
Beneath the blue Liteiny bridge,
Along the Neva floated ice,
Its plates sedately shifting,
From the Road of Life.1
And somewhere there,
In the Neva’s center,
From Liteiny Bridge I saw
On the ice, slowly rocking”
Distinctly
The shape of a cross.
The ice drifted up
Behind the piers,
Staving its coarse by the bridge.
And like a cross,
Soldered down by the arms,
On that ice floe lay a young man.
No, not a soldier killed near Dubrovka,
On the cursed “Nevsky Bridgehead,”2
But a boy,
Awkward as boys are
In an ill-fitting work jacket.
How he died on Lake Ladoga
I don’t know,
Killed by a bullet, or frozen in a storm.
…Across the seas,
The edges melting,
Floats his crystal bed.
It floats beneath the glimmer of all nocturnal constellations,
As in a cradle,
On the slate-gray waves.
…I’ve seen the world.
I’ve travelled half the earth,
And time has unfolded my soul.
Children laughed in London.
The schoolchildren danced
In Antofagaste.
But he sailed
All dust to dust, to lands unknown,
Like a soft moan
Through a mother’s dream.
Earthquakes have shaken dry lands.
Volcanoes have halted human zeal.
Bombs have roared.
And souls have gone mute.
But he in his crystal bed just sailed.
Peace has fled my soul.
Always,
Everywhere,
In dreams and while awake,
As I live,
With him I sail the world
Through human memory, I sail.
Mikhail Dudin. Pskov, 1969
This poem is profoundly Christian in meaning. In it is contained an archetype of the Cross, made manifest in this terrible form. And it calls us to remembrance and conscience. To the remembrance of Leningrad’s Blockade Golgotha, and of the Cross of the Great Patriotic War.
It always seemed to me that a deeply believing Christian could have written that poem. And not long ago, I received confirmation of my hunch—Fr. Nikolai Bondarev told me that for many years, Mikhail Dudin was a parishioner of the St. Nicholas-Theophany Naval Cathedral in Leningrad—St. Petersburg. Moreover, he was friends with the church warden, Yuri Sergeyevich Kudinkin, who was very proud of the fact that this famous poet had gifted him an anthology of his poems.
Poet Mikhail Alexandrovich Dudin What was the source of Mikhail Dudin’s religiosity? He was born in the village of Klevnevo in Kostroma province. He himself recalled his childhood:
“My only friend in childhood was my grandfather, Pavel Ivanovich, a remarkable man in his own way. He worked at a factory, became a master at grinding, bought his freedom from the nobleman, acquired a small piece of land from him, and founded our village. Even before I started school, he taught me to read Milton’s Paradise Lost—an enormous volume with illustrations by Dore, with English text on one page and Russian on the next. He had other books too—The Lives of the Saints, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Nikitin, and Nekrasov.”
Most likely Mikhail Dudin’s faith grew from these childhood memories, from the depth of Russian life—and was forged by war.
Actor Innokenty Smoktynovsky
Guards Sergeant Innokenty Smoktunovich Often, faith at war came with miracles. We only have to recall the life at the front of Innokenty Mikhailovich Smoktunovsky. During the Battle on the Dnieper River, he was delivering a report from the commander of the 212th Guards Regiment. His companion had died. Innokenty found himself in the water, now immersed, now emerging. He made to his destination by a miracle. His regiment companions were amazed and said, “You scrawny thing, you were born under a lucky star.” Innokenty Smoktunovich (that was his original surname) was very thin.
Even more amazing was his escape from captivity after he had been taken prisoner near Zhitomir at the end of 1943. For a month he was shuttled from one prison camp to another in Zhitomir, Shepetovka, and Berdichev, until one transfer when he managed to escape, thanks to one other captured soldier. That man said to Innokenty, “Tell them you have to relieve yourself.” They left the column, Innokenty hid under a bridge, and the other soldier rolled down the embankment and erased their footprints. He remembered his savior with gratitude for the rest of his life. After that, Innokenty Smoktunovich sat in a snowdrift for nearly a day, afraid to move. There was a moment when a German officer slid by right next to him without noticing the prisoner of war. On his last legs, the escapee made it to the nearest house and collapsed at the door. And another miracle happened: They did not give him up, even though the Germans shot people for hiding prisoners of war. The mistress of the house, Vasilissa, fed and washed him, then sent him to the partisans.
Innokenty Smoktunovsky, an actor of theater and cinema. Innokenty Mikhailovich Smoktunovsky maintained a warm relationship with this family to the end of his days. Probably God preserved this future great actor for Russia, for all of us…3
These three very different fates speak of one thing—the faith of the Russian people and their heroic feat. And also of God’s Providence, which “by the depths of His wisdom provides all things out of love for mankind,” and which led our country to Victory.
