We all know from the school bench about the last days of World War II and the feat of the Red Army soldiers Mikhail Egorov and Meliton Kantaria, who hoisted the red Victory Banner over the German Reichstag . For decades, official history has said that they were the first to succeed in establishing a banner informing of victory over defeated Berlin. However, today there is another version: the soldier who fastened the red banner above the Reichstag building before everyone else was 19-year-old private Grigory Petrovich Bulatov. His nationality is Kungur Tatar. For a long time, Bulatov was not mentioned in historical literature. And only in recent years, Russia learned about the feat of this brave guy.
early years
Bulatov Grigory Petrovich, whose biography will be considered in this article, was born on November 16, 1925 in the Urals. His homeland is a small village Cherkasovo, located in the Berezovsky district of the Sverdlovsk region. The boy's parents were simple workers. Soon after the birth of their son, they settled in Kungur (Perm Territory). At the age of four, Grisha moved with his parents to the town of Slobodskaya (Kirov region) and began to live in one of the houses belonging to the distillery.
At 8, Bulatov went to a local school number 3. As his classmates recalled, he studied without much hunting. However, it was impossible to call the boy a bummer, as he constantly helped his parents with the housework. Gregory provided livestock with feed, was an excellent mushroomer and fisherman. The boy’s childhood passed on the Vyatka River. He was very good at swimming and repeatedly saved drowning people. He had many friends, among whom he enjoyed great authority.
Factory work, mobilization
With the outbreak of World War II, Bulatov Grigory Petrovich was immediately forced to grow up. His family, like many others, began to defend their homeland from fascism. The guy’s father went to the front, and Grigory himself went to work at the Red Anchor plant in Sloboda, which during the war produced plywood for the needs of Soviet aviation.
In 1942, a funeral for his father came to the Bulatov family. Grisha did not want to be in the rear anymore and went to the draft board to volunteer for the front. But because of his young age, and then Bulatov was only 16 years old, he was refused. He had to get his boyfriend for a whole year. In June 1943, Gregory was drafted into the Red Army. Bulatov was sent to guard military depots located near Slobodsky in the village of Vakhrushi.
In the midst of war
Grigory Petrovich came to the front in the spring of 1944. At first he was a shooter, and then - an ordinary reconnaissance officer of the 150th Infantry Division under the command of S. Sorokin, which is part of the First Belorussian Front. In many battles Bulatov Grigory Petrovich distinguished himself with special courage. Briefly describing this stage in the life of a young guy, we can say that together with the division he reached Berlin, took part in the liberation of Warsaw and the battle of Kunersdorf. When Soviet troops broke through in the spring of 1945 to the German capital, Bulatov was 19 and a half years old.
On the outskirts of the Reichstag
The assault on Berlin lasted a week. On April 28, the troops of the First Belorussian Front were on the outskirts of the Reichstag. Further events developed so rapidly that the enemy forces could not resist the enemy. On April 29, under the control of Soviet soldiers of the 150th and 191st divisions, the Moltke Bridge laid across the River Spree fell. At dawn the next day, they stormed the house in which the Ministry of the Interior was located, and paved the way for the Reichstag. It was possible to drive the Germans out of their citadel only on the third attempt.
Red banner
Bulatov Grigory Petrovich stormed the Reichstag along with his reconnaissance group, led by Captain Sorokin. She was the first to break through to the building. The Soviet command promised those who would be the earliest to be able to hoist the red banner over the Reichstag and put them on the rank of Heroes of the USSR. On April 30, at 2 p.m. Bulatov and party organizer Viktor Provatorov were the first to break into the building. Since they didn’t have a real Victory Banner, they made a flag from red fabric that was under their hands. Homemade banner fighters first attached to the window located on the second floor. Division commander Semyon Sorokin felt that the flag was set too low and told the guys to go up to the roof. Fulfilling the captain’s order, Grigory Bulatov, at 14.25 minutes, together with other scouts from his group climbed onto the gable of the Reichstag and attached a makeshift banner to the harness of the bronze horse, which is part of the sculptural composition of William I.
The victorious flag sagged over Berlin for 9 hours. At a time when Grigory Petrovich Bulatov hoisted a banner over the German parliament, battles were still going on in the city itself. Kantaria and Egorov set the flag on the same day at 22 hours and 20 minutes. By then, the fighting for Berlin was over.
There is another version according to which Bulatov installed a red banner on the Reichstag along with his fellow soldier from Kazakhstan, Rakhimzhan Koshkarbayev. But according to this information, Grigory Petrovich was the first who managed to break through to the building. Supported by Koshkarbayev by the legs, he hoisted a banner at the second floor level. You can read about this event in the book "We Stormed the Reichstag," written by Hero of the USSR I. Klochkov.
Euphoria after Victory
On May 5, Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote about the exploit of a young intelligence officer. The article dedicated to him said: after the Germans were forced out of the Reichstag, a snub-nosed soldier from the Kirov region burst into the building. He, like a cat, climbed onto the roof, and, crouching beneath enemy bullets flying past, fastened a red banner on it, announcing victory. For several days he was a real hero Bulatov Grigory Petrovich. The photo of the intelligence officer and his comrades against the Reichstag, taken by correspondents Shnayderov and Ryumkin, was published in Pravda on May 20, 1945. In addition to Bulatov, the image also showed intelligence officers of his group Pravotorov, Oreshko, Pochkovsky, Lysenko, Gibadulin, Bryukhovetsky, and also commander Sorokin. The feat of the first standard bearer was captured on film by documentary filmmaker Carmen. For filming, the young scout had to re-climb the roof and hoist the banner over the Reichstag.
3 days after the feat, Grigory Petrovich Bulatov was called to Marshal Zhukov himself. The commander of the First Belorussian Front solemnly handed over to the ordinary his photo card, a dedication inscription on which confirmed the guy’s heroic deed.
Feat paid
The joy of the young hero did not last long. Unexpectedly for him, the soldiers who first established the victorious banner on the front of the parliament declared Kantaria and Egorov, who managed to climb the roof 8 hours after Gregory. They got the titles of Heroes of the USSR, honors, their names were forever immortalized in historical books.
Soon after the end of the war, Grigory Petrovich Bulatov was called on the carpet to Stalin. The guy hoped that for the presentation of the award, but his expectations were not met. The leader, congratulating Grisha and shaking his hand, asked him to give up the title of Hero of the USSR for as long as 20 years, and during this time not to tell anyone about his exploit. After that, Bulatov was sent to the cottage to Beria, from where he, deliberately accused of raping a maid, went straight to prison. After spending a year and a half among criminals, Gregory was released. He returned to his native Slobodskaya only in 1949. He was all in tattoos, aged and resentful of life, for 20 years he kept the word given to Stalin.
The further life of Bulatov
In 1955, Grigory Petrovich married a girl Rimma from his town. A year later, the young wife gave him a daughter, Lyudmila. All the post-war period Bulatov lived in Slobodsky and worked on rafting.
2 decades after the end of the war, Bulatov ceased to be silent about his feat. He appealed to different authorities, hoping that the once promised title of Hero of the USSR would still be given to him, but to no avail. No one in the country was going to rewrite official history and recall past events. The only ones who believed Grigory Petrovich were the participants in the hostilities. They gave Bulatov the nickname Grishka Reichstag, which was fixed to him until the end of his life.
Rumors around the hero’s death
On April 19, 1973, Grigory Petrovich was found hanged. According to the official version, he committed suicide, disappointed in life and tired of proving to others his feat. But fellow countrymen Bulatov say that he was killed. On the day of the death of Grishka-Reichstag, two unknown people in civilian clothes spun for a long time near the entrance of the factory where he worked. After they disappeared, no one else saw Bulatov alive. He was buried in a local cemetery in Slobodsky.
The memory of Bulatov
About Grigory Petrovich again spoke after the collapse of the USSR. In 2001, the director Marina Dokhmatskaya made the documentary “Soldier and Marshal”, which tells about the forgotten feat of Private Bulatov. In 2005, near the main entrance to the cemetery in the town of Slobodsky, a granite monument was erected to Grigory Petrovich with the inscription “The standard-bearer of Victory”. And in May 2015, the Bulatov monument was inaugurated in the central park of Kirov.
The local authorities of the Kirov region repeatedly promised that they would restore historical justice and achieve the assignment to Grigory Petrovich of the title of Hero of the USSR, about which he had dreamed so during his lifetime. And although getting to the truth 70 years after the Victory is not so simple, I want to believe in a happy outcome of this matter.