In the congratulations on the 55th anniversary of the Great Victory, an elderly resident of the small Siberian station of Tyazhin, Nikolai Ivanovich Masalov, among other messages, said: "You are like an Honorary Citizen of Berlin...

Sergeant Nikolai Masalov fought in the Guards Rifle Regiment of the 8th Guards Army. He fought well, for which he was awarded and appointed as the regiment's standard-bearer. During the Battle of Berlin, the standard-bearers were increasingly required to unfurl the banners, as commanders demanded that they be hoisted over captured heights. However, a figure carrying a red banner was an easy target for the enemy. But God spared Masalov, and by April 29, 1945, when the regiment was engaged in the most difficult offensive battle for the Seelow Heights, he was alive and well.

The facts tell us how bloody the battles were in these places. In East Germany, in Seelow, there is a memorial to the 30,000 Soviet soldiers and officers who died. In the mass graves in Treptow Park, 7,200 participants of the assault on Berlin are buried, in Schönholz, 13,200 are buried, and in Weißensee, 1,100 are buried. Before East Germany was united with West Germany, there were about 200 memorial cemeteries in East Germany where Soviet soldiers were buried.

The main life-affirming monument symbolizing the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany is the monument to the Soviet soldier in Treptow Park. At a height of thirty meters, there stands a victorious warrior, clutching a sword in his right hand that has cut down the Nazi swastika, and gently holding a rescued German girl to his chest with his left hand.

What happened to Sergeant Nikolai Masalov on April 29, 1945, is directly related to this monument.

"On the morning of April 29," recalls Nikolai Ivanovich Masalov, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, "an hour before the assault on Tiergarten began, I was ordered to bring the regiment's banner. I remember a brief period of relative calm, and in that silence, I heard a child crying. "Mutti, mutti," the girl was calling out, sobbing.

I immediately realized that she was under the bridge, and I told our political officer, Ivan Paderin: "We need to save her, please allow me to...

"Go ahead," my countryman replied. I handed the banner to an assistant and made my way to the bridge...

In front of him was a small square, which was well-visible and shootable. Nikolai crawled in tense silence, and he was sure that he was being watched not only by his own men. And indeed, he was. A German machine gun fired a short burst, followed by another. The fascist gunner was firing short, precise bursts. Nikolai rolled over and prayed that he would reach the concrete wall of the canal. Behind it was safety, where he could take cover. At that moment, he did not think about returning.

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He reached the spot, and the guards, who had been watching Masalov's raid, breathed a sigh of relief. They had been preparing to rush to Nikolai's aid.

In his book "The Banners of the Winners," the regiment's political officer, later a well-known writer, Ivan Paderin, wrote: "And then we heard Masalov's voice:

- I'm with the child. The machine gun is on the right balcony of the house with the columns. Shut his mouth!

I had never seen such a united and powerful fire. The regiment's guards fired at the house with all kinds of weapons. Masalov came out from under the bridge with a three-year-old German girl in his arms."

The war ended, and the question of creating a sculptural ensemble, a monument dedicated to the victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany, arose. In his memoirs, the People's Sculptor of the USSR, Yevgeny Vuchetich, noted that immediately after the Potsdam Conference, he was summoned by K.E. Voroshilov, who suggested creating such an ensemble and advised placing a majestic figure of Stalin holding the globe in his hands in its center.

Vucetich worked on the sculptural composition sporo. Soon the central figure was created, several secondary sketches were prepared: "Soldier with a machine gun", "Soldier with a grenade", "Soldier-winner with a banner in his hands". Specialists came-sculptors, artists. Approved, praised. And the author was dissatisfied with what he had done. Something was missing from all of this. As they say, there was no salt. So he went to Berlin. He talked to the soldiers. He took hundreds of sketches and photographs. Among the many stories about how Soviet soldiers saved German children, there was one about Sergeant Nikolai Masalov...

After returning to Moscow, Evgeny Vuchetich soon created a clay figure of a soldier with a child on his chest. He paused and covered the work with a piece of parchment.

It was time to show the monument-ensemble project to the Art Council. Stalin was supposed to be present.

In his memoirs, Evgeny Vuchetich noted that the Supreme Leader's opinion played a crucial role in determining which figure to place in the center of the sculptural group. The sculptor's own account of this event was used in Ivan Paderin's documentary novel "The Banners of the Winners." Here is an excerpt from the novel:

"... Stalin appeared. He walked around the table where the sketches were placed, and he looked at the sculptor with a frown. He did not like the central figure, and he looked at the other figure, the one under the parchment:

"What's this?"

"This is also a sketch," Vucetich replied.

"The same and... it doesn't seem to be the same," Stalin remarked. "Show me."

Vuchetich quickly removed the parchment from the soldier's figure. Stalin examined it from all sides, then looked around at those present, smiled briefly at Vuchetich, and said:

"We'll place this soldier in the center of Berlin, on a high mound of earth," he said, pausing as if expecting objections. He lit his pipe, and everyone understood that he hadn't finished yet, that he was thinking about how to sum up his judgment, so no one dared to contradict him. He continued,

"So it was decided... Let this bronze giant, the victor, carry on his chest the girl, the bright hopes of the people liberated from fascism...

Nikolai Ivanovich Masalov has lived all his life in the Kemerovo region, at the Tyazhin station. He has worked for more than thirty years as the head of the household department at a kindergarten. He is currently seriously ill. The years are taking their toll. Sometimes, when he recalls the war, he looks at a photograph of a Soviet soldier holding a little girl in his arms. He knows that there were many people like him who saved German children during that terrible war. The Russian soldier's soul is kind and compassionate. And yet, he thinks that perhaps there is at least one small part of him in this famous sculpture.

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