Why have we forgotten the fallen defenders of the White House? Bound by the same blood Ilya Krichevsky Dmitry Komar

Born in Moscow in the family of an employee, a Jew. In 1980 he graduated from Moscow secondary school No. 744 and in 1986 from the Moscow Architectural Institute. He worked as an architect at State Design Institute No. 6. In 1986-88 he served in the ranks of the Soviet Army, junior sergeant. Then he worked as an architect at the Kommunar design and construction cooperative. Ilya Krichevsky wrote poetry; posthumously they were included in anthologies (“Strophes of the Century” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and others).

On August 19-21, 1991, during the period of activity in Moscow of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (GKChP), I. M. Krichevsky was among the citizens protesting against the entry of troops into Moscow and demanding democratic changes in the country. He died on the night of August 20-21, 1991 in the area of ​​an underground tunnel near Smolenskaya Square, where eight infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) of the Taman Motorized Rifle Division were blocked at the intersection of Tchaikovsky and Novy Arbat streets.

When citizens, trying to stop the movement of the BMP column towards Smolenskaya Square, poured gasoline (a fire mixture) on BMP No. 536, and the vehicle caught fire, the crew that left it began to move to neighboring BMPs under a hail of stones and metal rods. While boarding BMP No. 521, two of the crew members of the burning vehicle, covering the retreat of their comrades, fired warning shots into the air. At that moment, Krichevsky, calling on the soldiers to stop, took a step towards the BMP and received a through and fatal wound to the head.

By decree of the President of the USSR of August 24, 1991, “for courage and civic valor shown in defending democracy and the constitutional system of the USSR,” Krichevsky was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal (No. 11659).

He was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovskoye cemetery, where a monument was erected on his grave. A memorial sign in honor of I.M. Krichevsky was installed above the underground tunnel at the intersection of the Garden Ring with Novy Arbat Street in Moscow.

Awards

Hero of the Soviet Union

Awarded the Order of Lenin, Medal “Defender of Free Russia” No. 2.

One of the last Heroes of the Soviet Union.

Ilya Maratovich Krichevsky(February 3, Moscow - August 21, Moscow) - Soviet architect, one of the three killed defenders of the “White House” during the August 1991 putsch. Hero of the Soviet Union (1991)

Biography

When the demonstrators, trying to stop the movement of the infantry fighting vehicle towards Smolenskaya Square, poured gasoline (a fire mixture) on the infantry fighting vehicle No. 536, and the vehicle caught fire, the crew that abandoned it began to run across to the neighboring infantry fighting vehicles under a hail of stones and metal rods. While boarding BMP No. 521, two of the crew members of the burning vehicle, covering the retreat of their comrades, fired warning shots into the air. At that moment, Krichevsky rushed to the BMP and received a fatal wound to the head.

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Literature

• Sverdlov F. D. In the ranks of the brave: Essays on Jews - Heroes of the Soviet Union. - M., 1992.

Notes

Links

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Excerpt characterizing Krichevsky, Ilya Maratovich

In the forest for the first mushrooms...

On the banks of the Nemunas River (Neman)

Dad was an excellent conversationalist, and I was ready to listen to him for hours if such an opportunity arose... Probably just his strict attitude towards life, the arrangement of life values, the never changing habit of not getting anything for nothing, all this created for me the impression that I must deserve it too...
I remember very well how, as a very small child, I hung on his neck when he returned home from business trips, endlessly repeating how much I loved him. And dad looked at me seriously and answered: “If you love me, you shouldn’t tell me this, but you should always show me...”
And it was these words of his that remained an unwritten law for me for the rest of my life... True, I probably wasn’t always very good at “showing”, but I always tried honestly.
And in general, for everything that I am now, I owe it to my father, who, step by step, sculpted my future “I”, never giving any concessions, despite how selflessly and sincerely he loved me. During the most difficult years of my life, my father was my “island of calm,” where I could return at any time, knowing that I was always welcome there.
Having lived a very difficult and turbulent life himself, he wanted to be sure that I could stand up for myself in any unfavorable circumstances for me and would not break down from any troubles in life.
Actually, I can say from the bottom of my heart that I was very, very lucky with my parents. If they had been a little different, who knows where I would be now, and whether I would be at all...
I also think that fate brought my parents together for a reason. Because it seemed absolutely impossible for them to meet...
My dad was born in Siberia, in the distant city of Kurgan. Siberia was not the original place of residence of my father's family. This was the decision of the then “fair” Soviet government and, as has always been accepted, was not subject to discussion...
So, my real grandparents, one fine morning, were rudely escorted from their beloved and very beautiful, huge family estate, cut off from their usual life, and put into a completely creepy, dirty and cold carriage, heading in a frightening direction - Siberia...
Everything that I will talk about further was collected by me bit by bit from the memories and letters of our relatives in France, England, as well as from the stories and memories of my relatives and friends in Russia and Lithuania.
To my great regret, I was able to do this only after my father’s death, many, many years later...
Grandfather’s sister Alexandra Obolensky (later Alexis Obolensky) and Vasily and Anna Seryogin, who voluntarily went, were also exiled with them, who followed their grandfather by their own choice, since Vasily Nikandrovich for many years was grandfather’s attorney in all his affairs and one of the most his close friends.

Alexandra (Alexis) Obolenskaya Vasily and Anna Seryogin

Probably, you had to be truly a FRIEND in order to find the strength to make such a choice and go of your own free will to where you were going, as you go only to your own death. And this “death”, unfortunately, was then called Siberia...
I have always been very sad and painful for our beautiful Siberia, so proud, but so mercilessly trampled by the Bolshevik boots! ... And no words can tell how much suffering, pain, lives and tears this proud, but tormented land has absorbed... Is it because it was once the heart of our ancestral home that the “far-sighted revolutionaries” decided to denigrate and destroy this land, choosing it for their own devilish purposes?... After all, for many people, even many years later, Siberia still remained a “cursed” land, where someone’s father, someone’s brother, someone’s died. then a son... or maybe even someone's entire family.

Hot August 1991. "Swan Lake" on TV. Moscow. Putsch. Tanks. Dmitry Komar. Ilya Krichevsky. Vladimir Usov. Three young guys who died on the night of the 21st in a tunnel on the Garden Ring are the only sacred victims and posthumous heroes of the failed coup. Then they were 22, 28 and 37. Today - in another country and the new millennium - they would have turned 47, 53 and 62. A quarter of a century is still a lot...

Random heroes. That’s what they will be called later, after the final victory of democracy. Random victims... Anyone could have been in their place. Snatched from the crowd of thousands of defenders of the White House, nevertheless, only these three remained forever in the modern history of Russia.

Three monuments nearby on Vagankovo. On the morning of August 21, relatives come here and bring flowers. They met at a funeral and are still dating today. Less and less often, but definitely once a year - here, in the old cemetery. It's already twenty-four Augusts in a row.

Fathers Vladimir Usov and Dmitry Komar, mother Ilya Krichevsky, are no longer in this world. Time has dulled the pain. The memory remains...

Exhausted from melancholy,
I walked to the grave,
But behind the grave board
What I saw was not peace at all,
And the eternal battle,
Which in life you only dream about.
Ilya Krichevsky. Poet

First. Dmitry Komar

August 21, 1991. 0 hours 20 minutes. The center of Moscow in self-made barricades. A column of infantry fighting vehicles, on the orders of the putschists, is rushing from the White House towards the Garden Ring. A crowd of thousands, an uncontrollable sea of ​​people timidly surrounds the tanks... A young guy jumps onto the armor of an infantry fighting vehicle, throws a tarpaulin over the viewing slot to blind the crew... The attacker is thrown to the ground, a shot is heard. But he gets up and, wounded, nervously rushes at the iron colossus again. The landing hatch swings open from the impact, the driver suddenly accelerates, and the boy flies down. And he freezes on the ground covered in blood...

Dima really dreamed of flying. Become a pilot, recalls Lyubov Komar. - We have a military family, my husband is a major. But the medical commission rejected my son for health reasons and found heart problems. But he still continued to go to an airfield near Moscow and jump with a parachute. He was preparing himself to be a paratrooper, I knew about it, I was worried, of course, but what can you do, it was his choice. He joined the army at the age of 17. On November 6 he turned 18, but the conscription ended in October... And I begged the military commissar to take him earlier, they later said that I was crazy, but he too wanted to get into the Airborne Forces, and this could only be done in the autumn conscription.

The whole class accompanied him. Except for two friends who have already left to serve. “I can’t say that Dimka played favorites; there were times when he disrupted classes. The teachers complained that sometimes he would say something like that, the whole class would laugh and couldn’t stop... But for some reason I didn’t want to join the Komsomol. He said that they take both excellent students and poor students there, indiscriminately, but this is wrong, unfair.”

And it immediately became clear that Afghan was waiting for him. Mid-80s, the worst of it. Three companies were in training - one was sent to Central Asia, the second to criminal Czechoslovakia, the third to Kabul. “There was an opportunity to transfer him, but Dima refused... After his return, he spoke sparingly about that war: “Mom, you don’t need to know about this, it was too scary there.” My son just had pity on my heart.”

He was a very ordinary guy, his mother emphasizes. Only very fair. The day before he promised her that he would never go to the White House, near which, as it seemed in those days, the entire capital had gathered.

Dima really didn’t think about going anywhere,” continues Lyubov Komar. - Later his friends told me how it was. They shouted into the bullhorn that Rutskoi was calling on Afghans to defend democracy in Russia. And mine were already approaching the metro to go home from work. The son turned around and said to his comrades: that’s it, guys, I’m going, my name is called. He's an Afghan! But Dima was very worried that I would worry, we had an agreement since school - if you are delayed somewhere, be sure to call. We lived then in Istra, near Moscow. There was no telephone at home yet. So he called the deputy for the rear in our military town and asked him to tell my mother, that is, me, that everything was fine, that he was staying overnight in Moscow with his classmates... I didn’t seem to worry. After all, I warned you. But all evening I walked around as if in prostration, as if I had been pumped full of pills, this had never happened before... I went to bed at twenty minutes past twelve. It was as if something had suddenly let go... Just when he was killed.

Second. Ilya Krichevsky

The hatch of the BMP swings open from the impact, the driver sets off, the unfamiliar boy freezes abruptly on the ground... Under a hail of stones and bottles of gasoline, the crew of the torn apart BMP, fleeing, runs to neighboring cars. Covering their retreat, they fire wherever they hit. A stray random bullet - and another person falls... Fatal through and through to the head. 0 hours 30 minutes.

Recorded on an old reel. Amateur poetry evening. We gathered in someone's kitchen. Friends. Familiar. Neighbours.

"Good evening! We are very glad that you came here today. Take off your dark glasses, take the cotton wool out of your ears, open your souls,” a soft young voice. The speaker introduces himself: “Ilya Krichevsky, poet.” So far, little known. But this is temporary. He is 28. He survived Lermontov, but Pushkin’s thirty-seven is still almost ten years old, a whole century.

Real poets, as we know, die young. All Ilya’s poems are about that.

Thank you friend for talking to me
As if with a living person,
And I am deader than dead,
Although hearts are beating.
It's like we're just sleeping.

Our dad is an architect, quite successful, so the question was not asked where my brother and I would go - of course, into the architectural, well-trodden path, a worthy, real profession, not like some poetry or theater, which my brother simply raved about, - Marina Krichevskaya, Ilya’s sister, smiles sadly.

Intelligent family. So Moscow-Moscow. During vacation with parents by car to Crimea or Gagra. To the pioneer camp in the summer. We read smart books, watched good movies.

A black-haired guy with incredible eyes. It’s as if he’s looking not at the person, but into the very depths. This is Ilya in all photographs.

At night I read my poems to my mother. He was especially close to his mother. He told her that he was going to quit his design cooperative and still take the risk of going to the theater. Inessa Naumovna Krichevskaya then regularly went to the trial of the State Emergency Committee, did not miss a single meeting, until she realized: it was useless - the perpetrators would not be found.

They say these were political years, everyone around was just talking about politics, congresses were broadcast on television, the country was falling apart, there were some kind of disputes... You know, personally, I can’t remember anything like that. “All this was very far from us, from our family, from Ilyusha,” Marina assures.

Everything passed by the Krichevskys. If it weren't for August '91. “We searched in hospitals and morgues. He didn't have any documents with him. Then it was considered normal to go for a walk without a passport... Surprisingly, Ilyusha went to defend the White House precisely purposefully. Together with a friend. When confusion began in the tunnel, the comrade disappeared somewhere. Well, God be his judge... He didn’t answer calls afterwards either. It’s good that he at least mentioned our last name when Ilyusha was taken away dead. And on the morning of the 21st, my friend called and said: on the radio they are talking about some Krichevsky, that he died... We are two years apart. I was younger than him. Then, in '91. Now, of course, older. I remember how my brother kept looking for himself. Everything was rushing and rushing... But this is in creativity. But he was completely apolitical, and I still don’t have an answer to the question: why did he go there after all, to the White House, at what command of his soul?

Third. Vladimir Usov

A random bullet is fatal through and through to the head. Shouts: “Bastard! Scum! You killed him! The third man rushes to the aid of the guy who jumped onto the armor of the infantry fighting vehicle. He tries to take him away from under the tracks and falls under the tank himself, cut off by another shot... 0 hours 40 minutes. August 21, 1991.

Early 50s. On November 7, sailors from Leningrad visited the girls of the pedagogical institute, future teachers, at their Moscow alma mater. After the parade on Red Square. Fit, handsome men in uniform stayed for the gala evening. Then, of course, there was dancing. There they met. Future Rear Admiral Alexander Usov and his wife Sophia, teacher of Russian language and literature, parents of Vladimir Usov.

We traveled around the Union a lot. After all, I married a lieutenant. We were in Magadan, in the Baltic states, even in Belarus - a training detachment of our flotilla was stationed there. And Volodya was born in 1954 in the Latvian town of Ventspils, recalls Sofya Petrovna Usova.

He was the oldest of the dead - 37. Family, 15-year-old daughter. Now at that age they are still jumping around nightclubs, but then they were quite mature.

According to witnesses, Usov did not get under the bullets. He just tried to pull a complete stranger out from under the tank. The son of an officer - how could he have done otherwise?

Maybe it was just Dmitry Komar. Or Ilya Krichevsky...

The tank and the man underneath were tossed in different directions. The deceased Vladimir Usov was buried in a closed coffin. There was a question about burying all three on Red Square, among the revolutionaries and general secretaries, but here the families categorically opposed. We agreed on the famous Vagankovsky - especially since it is located not far from the site of the tragedy, you can walk there.

They did not know each other during their lifetime. Until my last few seconds. And they were forever connected after death - by one grave covered with granite. “When I think about this now, it seems to me that it was these three seemingly random victims that ultimately stopped the bloodshed, prevented even more bloodshed from happening, and horrified everyone,” says Sofya Petrovna Usova. She is 86, the entire history of the country has passed before her eyes.

The commander jumped out of the opened hatch into the darkness, grabbed a pistol from his holster and shouted: “I’m not a killer, but an officer, I don’t want any more victims, move away from the cars, the soldiers are following orders!” - rushed to a nearby infantry fighting vehicle, shooting into the air as he went. The crowd froze. The tanks stopped. (From the memories of eyewitnesses.)

“It’s hard for me to say, this was my only son... But I was able to survive his death. What was left to do? My husband and I lived for 57 years, we lived well, we managed to have a golden wedding. Now my great-granddaughter is growing up, Milena, she’s 12 - Volodin’s granddaughter.”

Requiem for three

As a schoolgirl, I remember those days very well: the windows in every apartment were wide open - it was August, it was hot, the antediluvian tube TVs were turned on at full volume. An endless human river spills out towards Vagankovo. And through the bitterness - some kind of aching bright feeling that we had won. And then everything will only be fine. “Sorry for not saving you,” Yeltsin booms, addressing the parents of the killed. And he promises to break, but not to let him down, to make sure that the memory of the martyrs lives forever.

But the Golden Stars of Heroes of the Soviet Union from Gorbachev were awarded to the families only six months later. When such a country - the USSR - no longer existed on the map. What then?

The trial of the State Emergency Committee, which did not end well, the accused were released. The criminal case against the crew of the ill-fated infantry fighting vehicle, which suppressed and shot people in a narrow tunnel, was also soon dropped due to the lack of evidence of a crime.

To be honest, I didn’t hate these soldiers. Why judge them, they were simply following orders,” Lyubov Komar throws up his hands.

The cause of death on Ilyusha’s death certificate is: a bullet wound to the head. But whose shot was and from which direction, we will probably never know, says Marina Krichevskaya.

The grateful authorities gave the heroes' parents an apartment each. In October 1993, Lyubov Komar watched the shooting of the White House from a balcony on Rublyovka. It was as if time had turned back, and she was reliving the death of her son. “Only it’s even scarier - because it’s right in front of my eyes.”

Dima had a fiancee. Masha,” continues Lyubov Akhtyamovna. - He was going to introduce us. We met at a funeral. Masha already has her own children who are adults. My grandson is growing up from my youngest son... Masha came to see me several times. One day we were drinking tea, and suddenly it turned out that her husband was freezing outside. He's embarrassed to come to us. Although I’m glad that everything turned out well for her, and Dima would be very happy about it. Because life goes on.

Then there were other wars, a great many funerals, the wheel turned: gangster chaos, zinc coffins from Chechnya, thousands of murdered boys returned to their mothers - against this background, the accidental death of three in August 1991 seems illusory, somehow unreal. Young people will probably not remember these names.

The only film captured the moment of their death. “Bastard! Scum! What are you doing - you killed him!”

Now this would be replicated on smartphones, liked on social networks, and played out in Internet memes.

We have become different. So is the country. And our whole world, which has stepped into the third millennium. Tougher, more ruthless, more indifferent. “This blood of Volodya, Dima and Ilya - it horrified everyone and... stopped them then. But would three dead now be enough? - Sofya Petrovna Usova asks a rhetorical question.

A quarter of a century has passed. What would you become, Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krichevsky, Vladimir Usov? Are they really like us? Or would this world change if you still remained alive...

Ilya Krichevsky, Dmitry Komar, Vladimir Usov - to whom and what do these names say today? Alas, they are almost forgotten. Meanwhile, these are the last Heroes of the Soviet Union and the first Heroes of Russia. During the August 1991 coup, these guys died defending our freedom.

This happened on the night of August 20, when a column of military equipment broke through to the White House in Moscow to arrest supporters of the democrat Yeltsin. 22-year-old Komar climbed onto an armored personnel carrier, trying to climb into the hatch and stop the military. He was shot from inside. His body was thrown, his leg was stuck, and he hung over the back of the armored personnel carrier. The armored personnel carrier stopped, but the guy's head was smashed. Usov tried to remove him from the car and was killed by a stray bullet. Krichevsky was shot dead as soldiers were getting out of another armored personnel carrier that had been set on fire by demonstrators.

Those who saw this fratricidal madness understood: this was the brink of civil war. Someone wrote, as if in blood on the asphalt: "The revolution has begun". 22, 28, 37 years old - that’s how old the three dead guys were. A day later they were declared heroes. A year later they forgot. A year later, in November 1993, the young Russian democracy did what it could stop the State Emergency Committee from doing: from the White House, which had been shelled from tanks by the democratic authorities, the authorities removed the corpses by trucks. So why did three young guys die in 1991?

The father of the deceased Ilya Krichevsky every year on the night of August 20-21 descends into the tunnel on Novy Arbat where his son died. But every year fewer and fewer people come to the memorial, which until the mid-nineties was a cult for Moscow.

And now the romantics and enthusiasts of 1991 have matured and become cynics - like those who led them to the barricades.

- Power forgets who makes it power,- Marat Krichevsky sighs. - One official from the Moscow government explained to me why he could not participate in the procession and memorial service on August 19-21: “The attitude of the people towards this either a revolution or a putsch is ambiguous.” He also said that he must “be with the people, and the people believe that the sacrifices were in vain.” What should I, father, answer? No amount of sacrifice can justify any ideal. And no matter how hard it is to say, the sacrifices were not in vain.

Dmitry Komar's mother Lyubov has the same attitude. She believes that they, their grief-stricken parents, were simply paid off. They were given free apartments and 250 rubles a month were added to their pensions. Which in those distant times was equivalent to a solid salary. Today this premium is close to the same 250 rubles. But the main thing is that the memory of August 1991 and the romance of that era, when everyone was waiting for freedom, has faded, and society is permeated with cynicism and disappointment.

Someone justifies the State Emergency Committee and the supporters of the putsch, someone foaming at the mouth proves that drawing a parallel between the State Emergency Committee-91 and the shooting of the White House in October 1993 is - “this is revanchism of communist tyranny”. Someone is softer and justifies Yeltsin by saying that he “I didn’t have the opportunity not to shoot parliament in ’93”. Some of the wiser ones talk about the logic of revolution, which always evolves into a dictatorship or junta. And only on its ruins can something civilized grow or fail to grow. But for those here and now, simple things are more important: neither the organizers of the State Emergency Committee, nor the rebels from the Rutsky-Khasbulatov team, nor even more so the democrats from Yeltsin’s entourage - not only did none of them die in 1991 or 1993. They all made careers or started businesses, but still “suffering for Russia” in bureaucratic chairs, banks or foundations named after their loved ones. And everyone is constantly flashing on TV. The gray-haired people are like wise people, they all criticize their former enemies, with whom they then sit in offices next door or together - in closed restaurants. Rosy-cheeked and well-fed.

Those who believed their calls and fell for revolutionary slogans (remember: Gaidar, Rutskoi, Nemtsov, Khasbulatov, Chubais - you can’t count them all! - they called people to the walls of the White House, realizing what was threatening them), are lying in the ground. All that was left after them were photographs of their mothers as children and the political careers of the rosy-cheeked and well-fed. People who can never prove that the death of others provided them with status, money and power. However, the understanding that the romantic ideals of freedom and democracy of 1991 were shot in 1993, by 2000, if not earlier, took shape in a painful insight - the dictatorship of the communists and the democracy promised by the “revolutionaries” were replaced by the dictatorship of moneybags.

Hence the wary attitude towards August 19, 1991 and the first three Heroes of Russia. Surely years will pass, and the era of further re-evaluations of the actions of the three guys who gave their lives for the ideals of freedom will come. To do this, we ourselves need to learn freedom - from fear or indifference to corrupt authorities, from the cult of money, from demagogues calling again to the barricades. Minimal changes, but they give a chance to suffer and scratch out the right to freedom.

Maybe someone remembers, but in 1993 only two people - the young artist Evgeny Mironov and journalist Alexander Lyubimov - exorcised: “People, stay home! There is no need to come to anyone’s defense!” They were not listened to, but today many people think so. Not all, but the majority. The shift in minds is so obvious that new “freedom” fighters are adapting to the anti-revolutionary sentiments of society. They don't want blood either, they talk exclusively about “peaceful protests on Bolotnaya”. And they are honest again - like Yeltsin in 1991, when he declared an uncompromising war "against privilege and corruption". They are also “unmercenary” - like Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana, who privatized the Kremlin and Russia with her “family” and is eating up those “crumbs” in London. Or as a revolutionary banker-bigamist, passionately defending the ideals of democracy. Or a liberal TV presenter, restaurant owner, co-owner of a mobile network and other highly profitable technologies. All of them are again preparing public performances - so “spontaneous” that even websites for them are opened three months before the protests themselves. Everything is divided into sections, neatly, with photos, links and tags. It’s just difficult with new heroes. Then they will support Saakashvili, who is wanted in Georgia. Then in Kyiv they will show up on the burning Maidan, and then make excuses: I’m not like that, I’m waiting for the tram. Then the hooligan Bozhena Rynska, who is under investigation and house arrest, but steadfastly enduring revolutionary hardships in Paris boutiques and Lvov restaurants, will be declared a symbol of freedom.

Nothing changes. The leaders of the revolution keep leading and leading people to other people's barricades for other people's interests. But the people (in the interpretation of the Rynsky gods - “cattle”, in the interpretation of the subsided Sobchak - “ballast”) are not being led. We are increasingly interested not in what will happen at the barricades, but what will happen after them. What plans do the revolutionaries have to rebuild the country? Who will rebuild it? Unlike business revolutionaries, we bear the brunt of off-the-scale corruption ourselves. And we want to reduce it, and not allow the next “fighters” against it - hungry and ambitious - to the feeding trough.

That's all. We're just not the romantics we used to be. And what Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krichevsky and Vladimir Usov were and will remain.

Architect of the design and construction cooperative "Kommunar" (Moscow). One of the three killed defenders of the White House during the August 1991 coup.

Born in Moscow in the family of an employee, a Jew. In 1980 he graduated from Moscow secondary school No. 744 and in 1986 from the Moscow Architectural Institute. He worked as an architect at State Design Institute No. 6. In 1986-88 he served in the ranks of the Soviet Army, junior sergeant. Then he worked as an architect at the Kommunar design and construction cooperative. Ilya Krichevsky wrote poetry; posthumously they were included in anthologies (“Strophes of the Century” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and others).

On August 19-21, 1991, during the period of activity in Moscow of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (GKChP), I. M. Krichevsky was among the citizens protesting against the entry of troops into Moscow and demanding democratic changes in the country. He died on the night of August 20-21, 1991 in the area of ​​an underground tunnel near Smolenskaya Square, where eight infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) of the Taman Motorized Rifle Division were blocked at the intersection of Tchaikovsky and Novy Arbat streets.

When citizens, trying to stop the movement of the BMP column towards Smolenskaya Square, poured gasoline (a fire mixture) on BMP No. 536, and the vehicle caught fire, the crew that left it began to move to neighboring BMPs under a hail of stones and metal rods. While boarding BMP No. 521, two of the crew members of the burning vehicle, covering the retreat of their comrades, fired warning shots into the air. At that moment, Krichevsky, calling on the soldiers to stop, took a step towards the BMP and received a through and fatal wound to the head.

By decree of the President of the USSR of August 24, 1991, “for courage and civic valor shown in defending democracy and the constitutional system of the USSR,” Krichevsky was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal (No. 11659).

He was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovskoye cemetery, where a monument was erected on his grave. A memorial sign in honor of I.M. Krichevsky was installed above the underground tunnel at the intersection of the Garden Ring with Novy Arbat Street in Moscow.

Awards

Hero of the Soviet Union

Awarded the Order of Lenin, Medal “Defender of Free Russia” No. 2.

One of the last Heroes of the Soviet Union.