DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Zamarin, full unedited interview ID UKR125.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4930nx56 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 17 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/17 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Zamarin, full unedited interview ID UKR125.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4930nx56 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is June 23, 2009. We’re in Kharkov meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your name, patronymic, and surname, as well as where and when you were born. Mikhail Grigoryevich Zamarin. I was born on July 1, 1918, in the city of Pervomaisk in Odessa Oblast. —Please tell us about your childhood and your time in school, as well as about the family you grew up in. Our family had very many children: I had three brothers and two sisters. My mother died quite early, when I was five years old. My stepmother raised me. She also had three children. Altogether there were ten people. My father was a carpenter. We lived in the town of Novokrasnovo in Odessa Oblast. It was a very large town. It had 1000 households. My father lived there before the revolution. He made windows and doors for the peasants. He was paid by getting part of the harvest. Out of a thousand households, there was only one Jewish family. People treated my father with respect. Everyone really respected him and liked him because he didn’t take cash. If the harvest was poor in a given year, [a customer] would come and say “Grigori, my harvest is poor this year, I can’t pay you.” Well, okay, then next year. And that’s why people treated him with respect. In ‘24 we moved to Moscow. I was a student in school number 27. Of course, when I arrived there, having finished the third grade, I [had to start] the third grade again, because my Russian was very poor. In the first composition [that was assigned], I made forty-eight mistakes on one page. Well, I improved after that. I finished school. My father worked as a carpenter in Moscow. Everyone went to a factory apprenticeship school as soon as they turned thirteen or fourteen. My brother, who was two years older than I was, went to a factory apprenticeship school. Then I went to a factory apprenticeship school. I finished the factory apprenticeship school and became a metal turner. I worked at the Ordzhonikidze factory in Moscow. My two older brothers . one of them went to Donbas and worked in a mine. Then he worked to build the Mariupol metallurgical industrial complex. He got qualified as a planing machine operator there. My oldest brother was disabled since childhood. His leg was maimed. He drove a bitumen paving machine—a steamroller. Then he graduated from the institute and became an engineer. My middle brother also came to Moscow. He worked at a factory as the head of a technical control department, and after that, the Central Committee of the Party sent him to the Lenin Military-Political Academy. He graduated from that academy and was sent to Mongolia. He lived with his family in Mongolia in field conditions, along with his family, from ‘40 until ‘47. They lived in dugouts. He took part in the defeat of the Kwantung Army. My stepbrother, my stepmother’s son, also finished . he became a retired lieutenant, but he was a tailor and worked at an apparel factory in 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/17 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Zamarin, full unedited interview ID UKR125.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4930nx56 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN Moscow. In ‘40, during the Winter War, he was drafted, and after the Winter War, he became a career officer. He served in the North Caucasus, and later on the North Caucasian Front. After the war, he stayed there, and earned the rank of lieutenant. After the factory apprenticeship school, I worked at the factory. Then I was called up to work at the regional Komsomol committee. In due course, I was trained as a sniper. I was an instructor for snipers. I trained civilian marksmen in that region. I was transferred to the regional committee as a defense instructor. I worked there for a year, and [then] was sent, according to the instructions of the Central Committee, to the military academy. They sent me to the armor school in Kharkov. When I went to see the panel [that determines whether people are to be admitted], they rejected me, on account of my height. I was 3 centimeters too tall. I’m 183 cenitimeters tall. An hour later, they called me in to the mandate committee and told me that I wasn’t going home. I was to be transferred to the school for Red officers in Kharkov. That was a multidisciplinary school for all the services. There were departments for the infantry, artillery, and for armored tanks. I was sent there. I was registered as a cadet at the school, and two months later, the school was reorganized. It went from being an infantry school to the Kharkov Artillery Academy. I graduated from that school in ‘39. I graduated early. I was sent to the Winter War at the end of December. I arrived at the front and was there for, literally, a few days. I was made company commander, and three cadets who studied with me were also made lieutenants, and they were platoon commanders with me. An order was received that we be called away from the front and sent to be managed by the Kiev military command. In January 1941, I arrived in Kiev, and was sent to serve in the 169th Infantry Division that was located . its headquarters was in Vinnytsya, but the regiments were in Zhmerynka. I was made commander of an anti-tank artillery battery of a detached anti-tank division of the 169th Infantry Division. I took part in the liberation of Bessarabia. I was made commandant of Beltsy station. That’s a regional center. Then I was called back from there to the winter quarters. First, we arrived in Zhmerinka, and from Zhmerinka, the division was redeployed to Vitin, the regional center of Vinnytsya Oblast. —What year was that? All that was in ‘40. I continued to serve there until the beginning of the war. But if the war began for everyone on the 22nd, for us it started on the 16th. On the 16th, I came home for lunch, and a dispatch rider arrived on a motorcycle. He said “Comrade Lieutenant, marching orders.” Little suitcases . and I didn’t go home after that. We spent two days getting ready, and on the 19th we were sent to the Romanian border because the division and the entire corps were among the troops guarding the border. On the 21st, I had already taken up firing positions at the Put River. I had prepared firing charts. And at dawn, the Germans started crossing [the river], and I opened fire on them like everyone else. 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/17 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Zamarin, full unedited interview ID UKR125.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4930nx56 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN One regiment out of three was occupied with defense. Two regiments were in reserve, and one was doing defense along the border. I was with the defense troops. When Molotov gave his speech saying that the war had begun, I had already shot through an entire allowance of ammunition. We were there for about a month. The Romanians weren’t behaving very actively. They would start a crossing, and we would open fire on them, break up their pontoons, and that would be it. The Germans were already approaching Kiev, and we got an order to work our way back [giving battle] in the Kamenets-Podolsk region. Novaya Ushitsa outside Vinnytsya. The way we fell back is typical. One regiment was doing defense, while two regiments and all the other units of the division were on the marsh. When they arrived at the appointed border, another regiment would take up [defensive operations], and the first one would leave. If we took three days getting there—to the Prut River—then we took twenty hours getting back. The battery was on a mechanical draft. Tankettes pulled the cannons. When we crossed the Dniester, a lot of the vehicles had their engines’ protective covers pop off from overheating because it was quite hot and we were moving so quickly. The main battles began. The first battle was in the region of Novaya Ushitsa. At that battle, my battery’s crew distinguished itself. The battery was 95 percent people who had a higher education. There was a decree at that time: everyone who had completed . teachers . who weren’t serving in the army . they got deferments. But in ‘39, they were all drafted into the army. They gave my battery 120 people all at once, people who had a higher education. They were very literate and very smart. The crew distinguished itself. There was a gunner who was a Jew—the crews were international. They had Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Uzbeks, Georgians, Kazakhs. In that crew, there was a Jewish gunner, a Russian section chief, and the others were two Ukrainians and a Kazakh. That was the composition of the crew. And it was in that composition that we started the battle.