You must Fedya, you must

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In 1946 he was discharged from the army - the consequences of a severe concussion. Post-war poverty, the only close person - a sick mother … But gradually life began to improve: the actor, who had neither hearing nor voice, was invited to the Leningrad Theater of Musical Comedy - for a unique texture. Came episodic roles in the cinema: Fritzes, bourgeois, servants. He managed to star in 47 films. But the actor Leonid Gaidai discovered and glorified - "Operation" Y "and other adventures of Shurik" will always be watched in Russia.

He was born in 1920 and came from the war young, not spiteful. He loved to carve toys out of wood and give them to children.

AWARD LIST

The central archive of the Ministry of Defense keeps in its bowels a red daddy with the personal file of the Red Army soldier Alexei Makarovich Smirnov. He commanded a fire platoon in the 169th Mortar Regiment. He went from private to lieutenant. Two Orders of Glory - 2nd and 3rd degrees, the Order of the Red Star, medals "For Courage" and "For Military Merit" … And the future film actor brought from the war a severe concussion, "earned" in bloody battles for the Oder bridgehead.

The award list for the order for the third artillery division dated September 15, 1944 briefly "accompanies" the first order of Glory of Alexei Makarovich: "On June 20, 1944, in the area of height 283, the enemy attacked the battery by force of up to 40 Nazis. Comrade Smirnov, encouraging the fighters, rushed into battle, repulsed the attack of the Nazis. 17 Germans remained on the battlefield, he personally took 7 Nazis prisoner …"

One can only imagine that fight. The four-gun mortar battery hardly numbered more than fifteen men. And to go to counterattacks is not artillery bread. And how in hand-to-hand combat one can single-handedly "tie" seven at once - the present masters of oriental martial arts will hardly explain.

He received the second "Glory" for a battle near the village of Postashevice. Apparently, the infantry did not cover the mortarmen, and what cover in the offensive? Again there was a German attack, hand-to-hand, and - scanty lines in the award list:

Comrade Smirnov with three fighters rushed at the Germans and personally killed three Nazis from a machine gun and took two prisoners. On January 22, 1945, despite the intense rifle-machine-gun and artillery-mortar shelling, with the calculation he transported a mortar on himself to the left bank of the Oder River, in this battle two machine-gun points and twenty Nazis were destroyed.

How can you drag a 120-mm barrel with a cast-iron stove and mines on yourself in winter? The Oder, by the way, is not the narrowest river …

It turns out that such a desperate fighter was our favorite artist Alexei Smirnov. It is a pity that we learned about this quite recently - he never spoke about the war.

And he died when he learned about the death of Leonid Bykov …

Director Leonid Bykov met Smirnov long before the filming of "Only" old men "go to battle - even at Lenfilm, at the audition of the film" Bunny ". And he invited the artist to his picture at a time when Alexey Makarovich was going through hard times.

- On the sidelines of the artistic council, they cursed: "Why do we need this type?" - recalls the editor of the film "Only" old men "go to battle, the Kiev film critic Emilia Kosnichuk. - It was rumored that Smirnov was drinking hard, filming a little, why additional difficulties are needed … But Lenya did not see anyone except Smirnov in the role of a mechanic. And what a brilliant alliance has emerged! How we improvised on the go! Remember - a mechanic baptizes an airplane flying off on a combat mission? This was not in the script, but it came from the truth of the war.

They teased at the studio: Smirnov looks at Bykov adoringly, like a mother at a newborn.

- Or as a Turgenev girl, - Kosnichuk smiles. - However, no one felt any other attitude towards Bykov. “Only 'old men' go into battle - more than just a film. It used to be found and still find incomprehensible interweaving of cinematic and real destinies.

Emilia Kosnichuk heard the story of how Aleksey Smirnov died from a colleague who starred in the crowd. When Bykov crashed in a car near Kiev, Smirnov was in a hospital in serious condition, and those around him did not dare to tell him the bitter news. On the day of discharge, Aleksey Makarovich, a broad-minded person, decided to thank the doctors. And he offered the first toast to his best friend and great director Leonid Bykov. Like, without Leonid, it wouldn't be worth living! Someone in confusion dropped: "Don't you know - Bykov died …" Smirnov fell silent, left the table, returned to his ward, lay down on his bed and died.

“I’m not going to argue that this story is one hundred percent true,” says Kosnichuk. - Although I remember Alexei Makarovich as a very sincere person and I think: such a blow could stop his heart …

In the last years of his life, after the death of his mother, he was very lonely. He died on May 7, 1979, just before Victory Day.

Film "Only Old Men Go to Battle"