This year marks the 60th anniversary of the death of Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin, the chief designer of the best tank of the Great Patriotic War T-3. Until about the mid-80s, little was said about his bright, amazing, but short life. Now the situation has changed. Our senior permanent correspondent for the Siberian Military District, Colonel Viktor Saidakov, met with his daughter Elizaveta Mikhailovna Koshkina, who lives in Novosibirsk.

Indeed, why was so little written and talked about about Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin before? After all, his name wasn't banned. And suddenly, as if a dam had burst, after several significant events, which I will describe later, rarely has a newspaper not made an attempt to even touch on this great and somewhat tragic name. Although there was a lot of unconscious lies and deliberate distortion of facts in publications about Koshkin, but more, of course, sincere and kind words. In many articles, the authors made an attempt to study such a phenomenon as the famous Russian character.

And the events that caused an avalanche of publications were as follows. The opening of the monument to M. I. Koshkin in 1985 - on the fortieth anniversary of the Victory, posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor to the chief designer of the T-34 tank in 1990. And one last thing. In 1998, the 100th anniversary of the birth of our great compatriot was duly celebrated. That was two years ago. Then in the small homeland of M. I. Koshkin, in the village of Brynchagi, near Pereslavl, a bust of him was installed, and in Pereslavl itself the famous thirty-four was raised on a pedestal. What's the bill? Historians claim that more than 500 of these famous combat vehicles have become monuments of the invincibility of the Russian spirit and the courage of our people. This received a significant response in the press.

And yet, one cannot avoid the question: why do some journalists deliberately

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did you distort the events related to the chief designer, who, as his friends and relatives testify, was always extremely sincere and honest? By the way, it is possible to clarify everything with these relatives. Thank God, Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin's daughters are still alive and well.

Elizaveta Mikhailovna KOSHKINA:

"My dad died when I was twelve. This day still stands before my eyes. My father was buried literally all over Kharkiv. An endless stream of people remained in the children's memory. Many workers changed shifts at the factory to see off Mikhail Ilyich on his last journey. My father's death came as a surprise to us, even though he was ill. Many people wrote about his illness. But for some reason, almost all journalists in their publications refer to the fact that he caught a cold during the famous tank drive in early March 1940 from Kharkov to Moscow.

In fact, my father had fallen ill before the march. After all, almost all winter he was driving around the landfills where the "Counter" was tested - the so-called future T-34. And he had severe bronchitis. The director of the plant, Yu. E. Maksarev, and others advised my father to go to Moscow by train. But you had to know his character! He could not go by train, when in the 2000-kilometer march of his main brainchild-a new tank was, in fact, the most serious test. The opponents of this machine were still too strong, and its powerful patrons - Kirov and Ordzhonikidze-were no longer alive.

In general, my father was very seriously ill. Soon he was taken to the hospital, where he underwent surgery, removing one lung. Everyone hoped for a strong body of Mikhail Ilyich. They remembered that during the civil War, he was ill with typhus three times and survived. And this time he seemed to be on the mend. Everyone believed that Koshkin would win here, too. After all, he was only 42 years old.

Later they will write: "He died from the effects of an acute cold received during the transfer of tanks from Moscow to Kharkov." But he died of something else entirely - flux. Everything seems clear and understandable. And yet... Many things remained unsolvable to me after my father's death. Why did they say after his death: "Mikhail Ilyich was killed..." What is this-idle fiction? And another such fact. Never again in my life did I meet a nurse who took care of my father. Even though I was looking for her...

Here is an old group photo of Kalinin, Shvernik, Tukhachevsky and other well-known people together with their father. Almost all of them were repressed, except for my father and a few others.

It is said that S. Ordzhonikidze saved his father from imminent arrest by transferring him from Leningrad to Kharkiv in 1938. There is no proof of this. Although there is such a fact in the biography of my father. At the most critical moments of his life, when the T-34 project was in the balance and his father, in fact, arbitrarily drove tanks to Moscow, it was Stalin who supported him.

It turns out that fate ordered it. The writer Yakov Reznik said very accurately and succinctly about this: "There were still nine months left before the Nazis attacked our country, and Mikhail Koshkin had already fallen for its freedom, its victory - he fell as the first soldier of the Great Patriotic War."

And fate led him through life like this. At first, there was not even the remotest hint that he would connect himself with military equipment. His family lived very poorly in the village of Brynchagi, Yaroslavl province. At the age of 11, after finishing three grades of elementary school, Misha Koshkin left to look for a job in Moscow. He worked in various confectionery factories. After the revolution, in 1918, he decided to link his life with the Red Army. He fought in the railway forces. Several times he was ill with typhus, and in 1923, after being wounded, he was discharged. He worked for Krasny Sormov for some time, then studied at the Communist University named after Ya.M. Sverdlov. And then fate completely led him away from what he would devote his life to in the future. After moving to Vyatka (later Kirov), he began working as a director of a confectionery factory and teaching at the art school...

And then it revealed what foreigners call the incomprehensibility of the Russian soul, the Russian character. This is the phenomenon of the genius of insight, which a Russian person can manifest at any age.

At the age of thirty, Mikhail Koshkin decides to become a student at the Leningrad Machine-Building Institute.

During an internship at the Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant, Mikhail Koshkin realized that his vocation was tanks. After finishing the institute, he asked to be assigned to the Leningrad Experimental Tank Factory. But they wouldn't let him go. Then he wrote about his request to S. M. Kirov. The letter so offended the secretary of the Leningrad regional Party Committee that he wanted to meet with the graduate. After the meeting with Koshkin, Kirov called Ordzhonikidze and said: "Sergo, I found a nugget for you..."

Elizaveta Mikhailovna KOSHKINA:

"My father was obsessed with his job, and our whole family life was built around it: moving around, changing schools. My father was known, loved and respected by such famous people as Kirov, Ordzhonikidze, Epishev, Kalinin and others. He also met with Stalin several times and reported to him about his projects. His family, that is, we, lived very modestly. However, like everyone else around us.

He worked very hard, but always found time for us, the children. He was aware of our studies, our childhood amusements, pranks, and pranks... And he always made time for trips with children to nature, to the circus, to the theater. Thanks to our parents, we grew up as real theatergoers. By the way, Dad last watched his favorite "Swan Lake" shortly before his death. I didn't finish it. He began to cough and, finding it inconvenient to disturb others, went out.

Any comparison is lame, say the classics. Still, I'll do one thing. Just as the tank combines several unique aspects: armor protection, firepower and maneuverability, so Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin had several unique qualities: amazing foresight, the ability to rally people around him, and titanic efficiency. This was immediately felt and appreciated by those with whom he had worked at the Leningrad Tank Factory.

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At that time, the design bureau, where Koshkin was the deputy head of the department, worked on the projects of the T-29 wheel-tracked tank and the T-46-5 small tank. Koshkin was pressured by authorities, the rigid framework of planned tasks. Nevertheless, he managed to offer many original ideas that were highly appreciated. This is evidenced by the fact that in 1936 he was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

And in 1937, the tank developer will be transferred to Kharkiv for independent work. There, he almost immediately began to master the project of a purely tracked tank with a diesel engine and anti-shell armor. With their like-minded colleagues Kucherenko and Morozov, they looked beyond the Kremlin parades-they were preparing vehicles for war.

Incredibly, but a fact: the T-34 was born almost underground. The project "Oncoming", it was still called "His" and "Foundling" in the Design Bureau, had to be done in parallel with the wheel-tracked project-A-20. Koshkin smuggled a mock-up tank into the Kremlin and began his report, to the annoyance of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense for Armament, Commander Grigory Kulik, not with an A-20, but with an "Oncoming" one. The A-20,in fact, was already supported by many military leaders, and first of all, probably because Tukhachevsky did not quite like this technique at the time. And everything that was connected with his name, in the 38th was eradicated from the army.

Stalin's support then really decided everything. After listening to all the pros and cons, he summed up:" We will support Koshkin today. Let them make two cars. Tests will show who is right."

He will put a weighty point in the dispute another time - after Koshkin's march on tests through March snow and mud. After showing the amazing capabilities of the new combat vehicle, the future generalissimo will say: "It will be a swallow in our tank forces..."

Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin died when his tank went into mass production. This man has set himself and all those who worked on the project, an amazing monument. No, he wasn't just sitting on a pedestal with his thirty-four-year-old frozen on it. He is in the Great Victory, where the merit of Koshkin lies on the most accurate and demanding scales, the name of which is history.

I will not repeat the known facts, I will only remind you that on July 12, 1943, more than 1,200 combat vehicles took part in the tank battle near Prokhorovka. More than 700 of them were German. After the battle, more than 400 German tanks remained on the battlefield. Only a few of the Panthers survived. On the morning of July 13, Hitler gave the order to immediately stop Operation Citadel. Germany has never been able to compensate for the loss of heavy equipment on the Kursk Bulge.

Elizaveta Mikhailovna KOSHKINA:

- Most of my life was spent in Kazakhstan, where I went to work on assignment after graduating from the Institute. She taught children at school, raised her three daughters. Sometimes people who somehow found out that I was the daughter of the famous Koshkin, said: "Why didn't you say anything, but we would have..." Why were they silent? Probably, we, Koshkins, are from such a test. By the way, since childhood, my mother forbade us to speculate on my father's name. "Your father was famous," she said. "And you still have a lot to prove in your life..."

I can say for myself that I have lived a happy life after all. Working at school is a constant boil in boys 'and girls' affairs. But the last few years have been difficult...

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we Russians were, to put it mildly, "squeezed out" of Kazakhstan. What was it all about? The fact that there was no electricity, heating, or water. They haven't paid a pension for years. It was a shame: for forty years of work, how many children of different nationalities I taught the good. And my heart ached for something else - the war was the same for everyone: for the Kazakhs, for the Tatars, for the Russians, and for other peoples who inhabited the Soviet Union. My father did a lot to win this war. In general, I couldn't stand it, and we went to live in Novosibirsk with my daughter Marina. I would very much like to live out my life with dignity...

To live with dignity. Unfortunately, the moral deafness of the late 20th century has so distorted our society that basic moral principles have become inverted. In Novosibirsk, at first, Elizaveta Mikhailovna felt this in full. The appeal to the authorities with a request for help-to get a pension, transferring it from Kazakhstan to Russia, and somehow solve the housing problem-came across a blank wall of indifference. Some kind of designer Koshkin... So what? We have, they say, each designer of his own life.

Much has changed since V. A. Tolokonsky became Governor of the Novosibirsk Region. He almost immediately resolved the housing issue of M. I. Koshkin's daughter, and promised constant assistance in the future. A trip to her homeland for the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous designer was organized by another governor - A. I. Lebed. In general, E. M. Koshkina considers officer D. N. Shmelev, who voluntarily undertook to help the Koshkins in all matters on the Siberian land, to be the guardian angel of the family. Truly merciful is the Russian soul. The only sad thing is that all this should not be done in the form of mercy. This is a duty that we forget about. Duty to memory, to the older generation, duty to the Motherland. It was always performed by Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin.

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