Russian
Ukrainian |
According to
Essays on history of Computer Science and Technology in Ukraine" author Boris Malinovsky |
On June 21, 1941, the day before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War of the USSR Nick Brusentsov was an eighth-form (equivalent to 10th grade in the USA) schoolboy living in Dnepropetrovsk. He participated in competitions of young musicians, conducting a chorus which sang his own composition about Dzerzhinsk metallurgy workers. Everything was remarkable.
However, the next morning, together with the other children who had arrived from Dneprodzerzhinsk, he was urgently sent back home. He was already home when he heard Molotov's radio speech. The words "The Victory will be ours!" and Borodin's Bogatyrskaya symphony which followed were memorable for him.
Thus ended Nikolai's childhood.
He was born on February 7, 1925 in the village of Kamenskoe (now part of Dneprodzerzhinsk), Ukraine. His father Pyotr Brusentsov - the son of a railway worker - completed his studies at a worker's institute and in 1930 graduated from Dnepropetrovsk Chemistry Institute. He participated in construction of Dneprodzerzhisk coke firing plant. He died in 1939 at the age of 37. Nikolai's mother Maria Dmitrievna worked as the supervisor of a kindergarten at the plant where her husband had worked. Young woman bravely withstood the heavy blow. Three children required care. Nick was the eldest of the brothers. The youngest was only one year old. They still hadn't recovered from Pyotr's death when the war began. The bombings started. They dug holes in the ground near the house and hid there during the bombings. The kindergarten, where Maria worked along with the coke firing plant was evacuated to the Orenburg region.
Six months later, in February 1943, at the age of 18, Nikolay was drafted into the Army and sent to radio classes in Sverdlovsk. Six months later he was sent to a rifle division. The division formed near Tula. Two weeks later they were mobilized to Nevel where our troops were semi-surrounded by Germans.
Then, the war became easier - with successful offensives in Byelorussia, the Baltic republics, and East Prussia. The young soldier, yesterday a schoolboy, was awarded with a medal "For Bravery" and the Red Star Order. Of the twenty-five 18-year old soldiers who formed the division in