The Most Russian Person

From Moscow there was still a way to Volokolamsk. The Dovator’s corps was located there.

I will not speak much about the condition of our horseman-fighters. They simply could not believe their eyes that such necessary help came from their native Stavropol. That this help reached, that they could not look back at the last bullet again, that they could warmly dress up, that they could eat enough.

It was a joy! Great! And on the part of our team, which provided the load, and on the part of those who expected help.

And these hunger bitten people, exhausted by malnutrition, colds, the need to fight in the rear of the enemy, these people tried to dandle me in their arms – as an artist or a winner.

I quickly fought off such an expression of jubilation. I, well-fed and dressed young man of unusual height, as you know, had to experience a feeling of unsolicited and burning guilt in front of them. Although I understood that my participation in their fate was not the last one, that I also served and also fought in my place.

We stayed for a week with the Dovatortsy. Even Kalinin came, Mikhail Ivanovich, “All-Union headman”. We photographed for the memory.

Well, and when they came back to Stavropol, we brought bags of letters of gratitude from Dovatortsy, all of them were neatly delivered to the Committee of Defense, and the radio, and the newspapers were publishing this news from the front for a long time.

V. V. Vorontsov made a report on the trip at the meeting of the Regional Committee of Defense, and was there awarded to the Order Badge of Honor. I also got the medal For Military Merit.

But Germans were approaching the cities of Mineralnye Vody and Stavropol. And there I had to show my skills: there were more than a hundred and fifty trips to Nevinnomyssk in which the whole regional committee of the regional administration, the autotechnical department, repair crews and officer families were evacuated.

I myself was the last to leave because I had to blow up my own car fleet, stores of combustive-lubricating materials. But I was unable to complete the assigned task because there were still a few families left on the territory. I left by a miracle when Germans were already in the city, and Victor Fateev took me away on a motorcycle. He was the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the autotechnical department. I found my special squadron in Nevinnomyssk.

And then in Georgievsk an order came to go to Ordzhonikidze with a special squadron. It was the end of August. The chief of the border units read out Stalin's order that the Reserve of General Command would be formed out of all the retreating border units and units of the internal troops. But then events developed rapidly.”

“All this is described in detail by Alexander Mosintsev.

I think he would not mind if we refer to his authorship: “Ivan Nikiforovich's auto-battalion was included in the RGC. Immediately an order was received to prepare fifteen trucks for sending a newly formed mountain squad to Tyrnyauz.

In Nalchik, they had to be completed with warm uniforms and ammunition. In Tyrnyauz the detachment dismounted and went to the mountains. And the cars were supposed to return to Ordzhonikidze. However, Medyanik did not wait till their return. Only a month later in November, the drivers said that eight cars had been taken by some military unit that had come down from the mountains.

By this time, the Medyanik auto battalion had already been transferred to Kizlyar.

And the drivers had a difficult journey to Kizlyar. They and the guide Boris Tsogoev, who knew the roads of Ossetia and Kabarda, had to get to Kizlyar without food and weapons. They ate whatever they could find. It was a good thing they managed to get. The auto battalion delivered fighters of the Reserve of General Command to the front, took out the wounded and killed to the rear. Day and night the wheels were turning next to Malgobek, Elkhotovo, Ordzhonikidze, where fierce fighting took place.

At the beginning of November 1942, the snow had not yet fallen in Ordzhonikidze, it often drizzled like in autumn. The roads turned into slush under soldiers' boots and equipment.

Medyanik had just come to the apartment that he had rented near the headquarters of the RGC as the adjutant of the commander called, “Are you sleeping? Urgent call from the general.”

It was half past eleven which meant it was something very important. Cursing while walking through the puddles, Ivan Nikiforovich returned to headquarters.

In addition to him, in the office of Maslennikov there silently sat the chief of staff, an unfamiliar colonel and a civilian – an unshaven man in a suit smeared with mud.

Ivan Nikiforovich reported on his arrival.

“Sit down,” the general nodded. “Here, listen to what comrade will tell.”

The civilian did not keep himself waiting. Somewhere near Malgobek his retreating medical battalion got stuck in a ravine. Gasoline and food ran out and there were fifty wounded soldiers in nine cars. Two, according to the stranger, have already died and, perhaps, some more while he was somehow trying to reach the city. In addition, in order to cut off the road to the medical battalion, Germans threw out the paratroopers. There is no one to defend just three paramedics and he, a refugee, joined the battalion.

“People need urgently to be rescued, battalion commander,” the commander ordered. “Take trucks, combatants, gas, and go now.”

Ivan Nikiforovich did not know that this trip would almost be the last in his life. As well as he did not know and could not know, he would be on the verge of life and death. He did not know that he, Medyanik, a strong and healthy man, could remain an invalid for life. He knew only one thing there was a task. People were in trouble. He could help them. He had to help them. And not only because it was an order. And also because it was his everlasting, personal order of Conscience…

Fortunately, the cars of the first company had just returned from the trip. They loaded barrels of gasoline, a dry ration and, having taken the signalmen of Lieutenant Bizyukov with the guide, moved to Malgobek in three cars – a cross-country vehicle, a bus, and a truck.

It was already dawning when having traveled about seventy kilometers, a gun fire burst from behind the turning. They had to back up.

Bizyukov had six people at his disposal, Ivan Nikiforovich had four. Medyanik set the task for the lieutenant to eliminate the landing force. Having taken submachine guns and machine guns, the combatants went by the forest in the direction of the enemy. They agreed that, having completed the task, they would give a signal rocket meaning that the way was clear.

Waiting time always drag on slowly. Half an hour later shots thundered behind the turning and for about fifteen minutes there was a fierce firefight. Then everything calmed down and the raw November sky was lit by a rocket. It was possible to move on. Combatants were lucky as Bizyukov had not lost a single person. But when they descended into the ill- fated ravine, where the medical battalion had stuck, they were horrified.

Aside from the mud-stained cars there were four corpses. The wounded could hardly move their tongues, they had had neither food nor water for a few days. The paramedics somehow fed them and the drivers quickly refueled tanks with gasoline. It was necessary to get out of the ravine in a hurry. German motorcyclists could appear at any moment.

It became light when we took the road to Beslan. On the right there was a cliff, to the left there was a hillside of leafless forest. And there came down three Messerschmidts and hit the column with machine guns.

Immediately the car with medicines was flamed, the second one was hit too, the driver and the nurse were killed. Meanwhile, the planes turned for the second approach.

This time the wheels flew from the bus in different directions. Two soldiers were killed immediately; two others were seriously wounded.

The driver was pressed by a trunk that fell on the cabin. To release the hand, we had to saw a tree with a hacksaw.

Ivan Nikiforovich was not lucky either. He was lying in blood with unnaturally twisted legs. Without giving signs of life…”

From the almost unreal sensations of Medyanik himself:

Second gaps of consciousness. The fire burned, boiled, igniting the body with inhuman pain. It seemed that the pain would boil the blood, the vessels would burst and the blood would flood. On the black earth or on white snow.

And again the failure into the abyss without a name. Yes, no name, no kin… Unconscious.

Unconscious, unconscious.

Then the flight was interrupted to overturn him into a new terrible abyss of pain which moved to his legs.

But what is it so unbearably pressing him?

Oh, this is probably a concrete slab, it will now flatten him, rub into dust, and this dust with its lightness – like on wings – will summon him from this trap, from this pitch darkness to light.

He screamed, as it seemed to him, loudly. He called for help.

There was nothing of it. No sound was made by Medyanik. The weakened mind drew to him the abyss and the depth, united the remnants of the will into a silent cry for help that no one heard.

Standing above the unconscious battalion commander, as Ivan Nikiforovich was called, Lieutenant Bizyukov and his communications personnel understood that it was necessary to immediately transport the one who didn’t show any signs of life to the nearest locality.

Continuation of a chapter from the book by A. Mosintsev:

“One thing that made happy was that the planes did not make the third approach, they flew away. Hastily the wounded and the dead were moved to the bodies of other cars. In Beslan, in the hospital, as Bizyukov later said, Medyanik was washed and bandaged, having twenty wounds from fragments. He did not come to consciousness and his legs were still lifeless.

The lieutenant reported to the commander about the fulfillment of the task, informed about the victims and that the battalion commander was among seriously wounded. The hospital chief doctor was going to cut off his right leg.

Maslennikov asked to hand him the phone. The conversation was short. The commander warned that if he did not cure Medyanik, he could not escape the penal battalion. They did not always understand the possibilities of treatment in the conditions of war. If the commander had not warned the doctor, they would have cut Ivan Nikiforovich’s leg off. But since this case was taken under special control, they found two very strong men who were osteopaths and they were straightening his legs for half an hour, although Medyanik himself shouted without ceasing.

Tied up with bandages, he came to himself, but he could not speak, the head was shaking. They looked at him with pity. He was in that condition for two days. On the third the head of the hospital came. “Well, battalion commander, come on, get better!” And Ivan Nikiforovich, repeating the word “come on,” started speaking.

Twelve days he stayed in the ward. The situation at the front became worse. They were going to transfer the hospital, and Medyanik knew perfectly well that they could take him far away from his battalion…

Fortunately, a movie was brought to the hospital that evening and the entire nursing staff rushed to watch the picture. Ivan Nikiforovich, relying on the shoulders of his comrades, left unnoticed.

He was recovering in Ordzhonikidze in his apartment. And, as soon as he got stronger, although with a crutch, he returned to service. In fact, from that raid, Ivan Nikiforovich had become disabled, but he hid his disability until his retirement in 1972.”

This passage is cited with a conceived aim: not to give Ivan Nikiforovich the opportunity to once again experience the terrible flashback telling me about this incident.

But it was impossible not to tell about it. It was too tactilely filled with that wartime which Medyanik doesn’t like to remember. Just as he does not like the state of his own, does not allow anyone to groan and gasp around, despite his forced weakness. He doesn’t like the position of a person bent from pain, especially if it is him being a huge, strong, tall, brave, risky person as he was many years ago.

It seems to me that even now he is like this, only turned gray, wise with a long life experience, which is so necessary for young people.

Maybe you think that with such a mortal wound the war for Medyanik ended?

Not at all.

When the army of Paulus was defeated at Stalingrad, it became known that the 62nd Army under the command of General V. I. Chuykov, which with incredible efforts had gained the victory, was left without food, without ammunition. Who do you think was entrusted with the delivery of food stuff to Stalingrad? Of course, Medyanik, as an experienced transport worker!

All night they were loading cheese, sausages, a dozen of smoked pork carcasses, bread, boxes of vodka, barrels of alcohol and ammunition. In a word, everything that was available in the warehouse moved into the body of trucks.

It took more than a day to get to the unrecognizable ruined during military action, but once beautiful, city on the Volga. Neither lack of roads, nor cold and snow drifts could stop them. Medyanik delivered everything to the destination and handed over everything on receipt to the warehouse.

Vasiliy Ivanovich Chuykov personally thanked Ivan Nikiforovich and, having called Suslov, reported that the task was perfectly carried out by Medyanik.

That trip was memorable for our hero for many reasons. But among them was another one – personal. At the ceremonial dinner hosted by Stalingrad defenders Ivan Nikiforovich met and became friends with the man sitting next to him. It was Yevgeniy Parkhomenko, a representative of the General Staff and the son of the legendary hero of the revolution and civil war division commander Alexander Parhomenko.

For half a century, for nearly fifty long years, this friendship lasted, the beginning of which seemed to be specially programmed by His Greatness – The Occasion in the distant wartime of February of 1943 after the fateful and crucial Stalingrad battle.

On that memorable evening, the commander made a toast to the Victory, which everyone who was sitting at the table drank standing. Besides alcohol there were several bottles of vodka on the table the assortment unthinkable in the wartime.

After Stalingrad, the country took the first step towards Berlin. There were still bloody battles along the way, a lot of young and desperate heads, young lives would be devoured by the terrible “Moloch” of the war, but Stalingrad was really a turning point…

Knowing Ivan Nikiforovich for many years, I have never asked him whether he was upset that he did not take part in major military actions, such as Stalingrad, the Dnieper, Kurskaya Douga, the capture of Berlin. He did not leave the autograph on the walls of the defeated Reichstag. Young, strong, brave fighter drove girls crazy who dreamt of the hero on a white horse. It would seem that his portraits should have been replicated by front-line newspapers.

I decided not to ask such questions. In conversations Ivan Nikiforovich himself touched this topic overthrowing all my Maksims with a simple and convincing formula: “A well-secured and well-organized rear is half of success and glory, and, ultimately, Victory”.

After the successful trip to Stalingrad Medyanik returned to Ossetia and immediately received a task from a member of the Military Council to pick up 28 new cars of the famous German brand “Opel” in Nalchik, which were captured as a trophy and move with the advancing Soviet troops to the west.

But how could Stavropol which had become his hometown during his hard service let him go? And it took him under his wing to the former place of the head of the car fleet. The truth is the base was barbarously destroyed, ruined, almost destroyed by the fascists.

And this new task to restore the economy and provide transport for the group of the NKVD troops who were eliminating the remnants of the German detachments in the rear, which had no time to leave the Caucasus, Medyanik did perfectly as he did everything.

Stavropol… The main street of the city is Lenin Street. On this street the Germans built their repair shops. With the offensive of our troops they had left them destroyed, but with the “capital” the price of which Ivan Nikiforovich knew well. And these were trucks, ambulances and cars, motorcycles – altogether over one hundred pieces of equipment. Some turned out to be in order, on the run. The rest were restored. For Medyanik and his team it was a familiar, everyday work, only then accompanied by military reports of the Soviet Information Bureau delivered from Moscow…

The geography of the war gained more and more “steadily western direction”. Medyanik carried the service at his post. His wife, Lyubov Alekseevna, began working as a stenographer at the regional executive committee. Their son Zhenya was growing up. And in 1944 a daughter was born – Lidochka, who in the family was called affectionately – Lyalka, Lyalechka.

And Victory break out!

Joint, long-awaited, won with blood, by sleepless nights, deaths of young and elderly Soviet soldiers, tears of widows and mothers, work in the rear.

Victory is a collective joy, a joint big and holy holiday.

And here is an insult. The insult is not a problem, but it scratches the soul. After the war the new head of the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs arrived in Stavropol. The new broom, as it is known, sweeps clean… They dismissed Ivan Nikiforovich proposing to be the head of the fleet in Astrahan. He chose to stay, only as the head of the production workshops of the MGB and transport, on, so to speak, light duties.

1948 changed his fate. Ivan Nikiforovich was called to Moscow, to one of the ministries, to be transfered to another job.

“Where?”

“Destination – Sverdlovsk.”

Such was the response of the KGB chief of staff.

“I give you first-class coach ticket, they will meet you with impatience.”

“Who will be waiting?” Medyanik could not understand.

“Lieutenant-General Ivan Maksimovich Tkachenko.”

His heart was filled with warmth, the soul calmed down. He knew Ivan Maksimovich during wartime in the Caucasus. He was then in the rank of a colonel. And he held the post of representative of the Southern Group of Forces under the Reserve of the Main Command. It was under his leadership that the German agents were liquidated. And just in the first-class coach of the train going to the Urals Medyanik remembered the time that had tied his fate with the fate of Tkachenko.

While in Ordzhonikidze, Ivan Nikiforovich was ordered to deliver a group of a small detachment under Malgobek where German saboteurs savaged.

Then two Ivans, two warriors, two brave and courageous men, who did not fear the evil enemy, got together. When the German paratroopers were surrounded, Medyanik and Tkachenko walked alongside. They climbed a hillock, already naked in autumn, to look around and right there came the cracking of German machine guns. Without hesitation Ivan Nikiforovich fell to the ground and carried Tkachenko with him. And then, raising their heads, they saw there were new bursts from the next machine-gun fire at the place where they had just been standing.

Fractions of a second separated them from inevitable death.

These fractions of a second had bound forever their friendship born under deadly fire. Ivan Maksimovich never forgot that it was Medyanik who had saved his life.

And now they met again where the atomic saga in the life of Ivan Nikiforovich Medyanik began: the Kyshtym station, the secret “Mayak”, Chelyabinsk-40, Chelyabinsk-70, a deadly raid with Plutonium obtained in Dollezhal's laboratory, Semipalatinsk, terrible pictures of destruction as the result of the test of the first Soviet atomic bomb…

At that time, no one really knew the consequences of radiation, except, naturally, of scientists involved in this problem.

Did people die? Died. The way Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov perished, the way Ivan Maksimovich Tkachenko, a remarkable friend of Medyanik, also perished in 1953. The way Academician Alikhanov died, buried at the Novodevichy cemetery next to the brilliant physicist Landau, whose life was interrupted by a car accident…

“But Khariton, Zeldovich, Alexandrov, Slavsky, and some more, have lived for much more than ninety years. I myself is over a century. Dollezhal lived over a century. As for me, the doctors are still wondering how I managed to live and work with such doses of radiation. This means that not all the resources of the human body are yet known and each one has its own life expectancy code…”

“So this is the fate…”

“The fate either leads or not. It’s as if someone from above watches you.”

Seven years from 1948 to 1955 were spent by Ivan Nikiforovich at “Mayk”. His service was acknowledged as excellent. The department he headed did not have a single major accident, not a single case of death.

By the closed Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the head of the transport fleet of the “Mayak” plant, I. N. Medyanik was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Life is full of changes. They touched my hero, too.

After the birth of his daughter Lida, his wife's health was shaken. Lyubov began to feel worse, and the doctors again recommended the southern territories, especially Mineralnye Vody, where they successfully treated heart diseases.

There was no choice. He had to leave the Urals and move to Mineralnye Vody. To his good fortune they needed a car fleet manager in Lermontov, a new miners' town under construction, marked as “mailbox No. 1”.

“And a star speaks to a star…"

The reader's question is quite natural: how will the author justify these famous Lermontov lines in connection with the fate of his hero?

The answer is not difficult. We can recall the list of Ivan Nikiforovich, given at the beginning of the narration: each scientist’s name written by him is a star in the “atomic calendar" of science – I. V. Kurchatov, A. I. Alikhanov, N. A. Dollezhal, A. D. Sakharov, Y. B. Hariton, L. P. Alexandrov, space expert S. P. Korolev, in the management and construction of the nuclear site E. P. Slavsky, B. G. Muzrukov.

Thisallegory easilyappliesto theaward “iconostasis” of our great contemporaries: Golden Stars of Heroes seem to make the quiet chiming of orders and medals recalling the glorious achievements of national science.

And, finally, I confess the well-known Lermontov stanza was chosen by me almost as a true documentary, it was in Pyatigorsk that this poetry of tremendous power was composed by the poet. Aren’t his lines linked with the Mashuk mountain, which paths Lermontov walked along?

"I go out on the road alone,Through the mist the stony path shines,The night is dark, the wilderness responses to God,And a star speaks to a star…"

The team of the motor depot, led by Medyanik, was transferred to the construction of a huge television tower on top of Mashuk, it was the construction of the first television center in the region of Pyatigorsk. The height of the tower, or, as the communicators say, the repeater, was so huge that the top of it literally caught the clouds. More over, it went off scale for the height of 1160 meters!

And at night in clear weather, when the stars shine in the sky, one hears how a star speaks to a star.

The sixties in the life of Medyanik were not quit easy. His health started to shake. Heartbreaks began and one hospital was changed for another. And then a huge grief sorrow happened to the family – the wife Lyubov Alekseevna died in a car-crash.

It was necessary to survive, it was necessary to survive the disaster and it was necessary to work!

And then came humiliating and false denunciation. Ivan Nikiforovich refused point blank to return to the Lermontov car fleet. Friends came to help. He had a lot of them, both in the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, where Efim Slavsky worked, and at “Mayak”. Pyotr Ivanovich Butenko offered him a place as the chief of the detachment in the Kislovodsk car fleet, and at the same time he could undergo treatment at a cardiology clinic. The radiation let know. He was treated also with folk remedies, in particular honey. During vacation he even went with beekeepers to Elbrus.