Marshal Baghramyan and his queen Tamara: Stolen love that became a guardian angel

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Marshal Baghramyan is a heroic personality, he went through three wars and emerged victorious, despite the fact that his life more than once hung in the balance. He sincerely believed that he kept his love and a handful of earth in an old tobacco pouch. When he was recruiting this land from the house of his beloved girl, Lieutenant Baghramyan did not even have any hope of reciprocity. And yet she was next to him. He kidnapped his Tamara, contrary to tradition and convention, and she became his guardian angel. He never had front-line girlfriends, and he went into battle with the name of his wife on his lips.

Contrary to tradition

Ivan Baghramyan met his Tamara while he was a lieutenant in the tsarist army. He, the son of a simple railroad worker, fell madly in love with the schoolgirl he met on the street of Alexandropol (today Gyumri). He was struck by her refined features and bottomless black eyes. The girl turned out to be the daughter of the owner of a local factory and it seemed as if Baghramyan had no chance. But the young lieutenant was sure that he had met his fate, and therefore firmly decided to win the heart of the beauty.

But life decided otherwise. Ivan Baghramyan was urgently transferred to another city, and he left with the firm intention to return soon for his betrothed. Before leaving, he gathered earth in a pouch near his beloved's house, deciding that this talisman would warm him in difficult times. He did not part with the pouch for half a century and firmly believed that he protected him not only from troubles, but also from enemy bullets.

While he was fighting, his parents married Tamara. Her husband was an officer who saved the family from a bandit attack. When he asked for Tamara's hand, the girl's father could not refuse the savior. It seemed that Baghramyan had lost his beloved forever. But he soon learned that the bandits had brutally revenged on the officer. Tamara was left a widow, and besides, she was expecting a child.

According to Armenian traditions, she had to spend her whole life in longing for her deceased husband, raising a child. No man would dare to marry a pregnant widow, as this was contrary to age-old traditions. But Ivan Baghramyan was least of all inclined to miss his happiness a second time.

He came to Tamara, talked to her, confessed his feelings and saw the light of true love in her eyes. He was a faithful son of his people, but what could tradition mean when it came to the one he fell in love with at first sight? Ivan Baghramyan kidnapped his bride. The newborn son Tamara and Ivan Baghramyan were named Movses, and the future Marshal loved him with all his heart. And soon the couple had a daughter, Margarita, whom relatives called Margusha.

Love on the front line

When Bagramyan's younger brother Alexei was arrested in Baku in 1938, accused of anti-Soviet propaganda, the future Marshal rushed to save him. Alexei was not shot, but exiled, and Ivan Khristoforovich himself was fired from the army. He was not at all adapted to civilian life, it did not work out with work, and the family was desperately in poverty. Baghramyan was able to get a reception from Voroshilov, who listened to the officer and then gave the order to reinstate him in the army.

Ivan Khristoforovich met the war at dawn on June 22, 1941, when he was heading in a column to a military unit. Nobody realized right away that the drone of the planes was not heard from the neighboring airfield. Then the bombing began … And after that Ivan Baghramyan more than once found himself in situations where his life in the literal sense of the word was under threat. He never sat in the rear, he was always on the front line.

In the spring of 1942, he was accused of the failure of the Kharkov operation, when 170 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were killed. And although Baghramyan himself opposed the operation, led by Timoshenko and Khrushchev, it was he who came under attack. During the flight to Joseph Stalin, he wrote a farewell letter to his Tamara, in which he asked for only one thing - to understand him. But the commander-in-chief then took pity on the commander. By his decree, Baghramyan was transferred from staff work to a command position.

Tamara, having read the letter from her husband, immediately realized that he wrote it in a critical situation, and at the first opportunity she went to her husband at the front. Ivan Khristoforovich did not expect such a surprise and was incredibly happy at the moment when he hugged his beloved. For six months since the beginning of the war, he did not know anything about the fate of his wife and daughter, then he was able to establish correspondence when she was evacuated to Tashkent. Then I learned that Movses' son had volunteered for the front from the first day of the war.

And now Tamara was standing next to him, and her gaze was full of love and tenderness. Unlike many military leaders, Baghramyan never had front-line girlfriends. He constantly, every minute of his rest, thought about his Tamara and their children. With the name of his wife on his lips, he went into battle, wrote letters to her, in which he spoke openly and directly about his feelings. And that Tamara and Margusha are the main women in his life.

After the first arrival at the front, Tamara Amayakovna began to fly to her husband often. And she returned to Moscow when her daughter was already openly writing how lonely she was without her mother. The couple were able to visit the unit and Movses. There, at the front, listening to the sounds of the war, the couple dreamed of how happily they would live after the Victory. Once the wife found an old tobacco pouch with a handful of earth in her husband's tunic and asked her husband about his history. Ivan Khristoforovich did not want to tell, but after that he nevertheless admitted why he considered this pouch his lucky talisman. Indeed, for all the years of the war, he was never wounded. He was protected by his native land and the love of his Tamara.

Ivan Khristoforovich every time going into battle remembered that his wife and daughter were waiting for him at home. It is for the sake of their happy future that he is obliged to smash the enemy, not sparing himself. On account of Ivan Baghramyan there were many significant victories, including the capture of Konigsberg. And then he was at the head of the combined regiment of the 1st Baltic Front at the Victory Parade on Red Square in Moscow, and his wife and daughter looked at him from the guest rostrum.

Short peaceful happiness

After the war, the couple practically did not part. There was no longer the need to write letters to each other, because they could say everything by looking straight into the eyes of a loved one. They did not know how to quarrel and were an example of true love and fidelity for children and grandchildren. Movses Baghramyan became an artist, he had his own workshop, Margarita became an ophthalmologist, she got married and raised two children, son Ivan and daughter Karina.

Ivan Khristoforovich almost always smiled and was generally a very emotional person. Against him, Tamara Amayakovna seemed very restrained, almost cold. But in fact, only loved ones knew how gentle and caring their queen Tamara could be.

In 1962, Marshal Baghramyan conducted his last military operation during the Cuban missile crisis. Its task was to ensure the transfer of strategic missiles and military personnel in the amount of 50 thousand people to Cuba. During the operation, called "Anadyr", Ivan Khristoforovich realized how great the threat of a new war. And she could be much more terrible and ruthless than the Second World War.

Soon after "Anadyr" he retired and enjoyed life surrounded by family and friends. When in 1973 his wife was diagnosed with cancer, he believed that together they could defeat the disease. He was on duty around the clock at his wife's bed, refusing to leave his Tamara even for a minute, but soon his wife was gone. Life seemed to have lost all colors for the marshal. On the grave of his wife, he poured dry earth from his old tobacco pouch … In 1982, Ivan Baghramyan himself, a war hero and just a person who knew how to love, passed away. Marshal Baghramyan was buried at the Kremlin wall.

Ivan Baghramyan was a truly unique person, he loved only one woman all his life and never even thought about making a front-line girlfriend. Women with whom officers and commanders had romance in wartime, called field wives. Their reputation was like that of women of easy virtue, and the attitude was appropriate, but is it possible to condemn women who tried to be happy in the crucible of the Great Patriotic War?