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Video: Nikolai and Svetlana Shchelokov: A 40-year-long military romance
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR Nikolai Anisimovich Shchelokov had enough enemies and ill-wishers. He was a controversial figure, and many of his decisions were not understood. However, there was the only person who, under any circumstances, took his side. Svetlana Popova and Nikolai Shchelokov met in the midst of the war, in 1943, became husband and wife in 1945. They walked hand in hand through life for 40 years, and then, with a difference of two years, took their own lives.
Political instructor and nurse
Fate brought these two people together in Krasnodar in 1943. Nikolay Shchelokov, a young stately political instructor of the 218th Romodan-Kiev Rifle Division and the 28th Lviv Rifle Corps, met 17-year-old nurse Svetlana Popova at one of the events.
Subsequently, Svetlana Shchelokova claimed that the boots with spurs in which Nikolai walked most of all struck her. He himself vigorously denied this fact: he could not wear spurs without being a cavalryman. Be that as it may, feelings immediately arose between the young people. And Svetlana Popova went to the front after her lover.
Later, the son of Svetlana and Nikolai Shchelokovs will ask his grandparents a question: how could they let their 17-year-old daughter go to the front? And they simply believed both their daughter and the handsome political instructor. The young nurse went with her beloved person to Prague and saved many lives during the war. Among her awards were two Medals for Military Merit.
At a ball held in Prague in honor of the end of World War II, Marshal Konev himself drew attention to the young nurse and, asking permission from Nikolai Shchelokov, invited the girl to a waltz tour. In 1945, Svetlana Popova married a loved one. They returned from the war in shabby greatcoats and a small amount of personal belongings that fit in the colonel's field bag, yes, a small nurse's trunk.
The path to the pinnacle of power
In 1946, Nikolai Anisimovich was appointed to the post of Deputy Minister of Local Industry of the Ukrainian SSR. Svetlana entered a medical institute, received a doctor's diploma and worked as an otolaryngologist all her life. Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich were friends with the Shchelokov family, and the singer recalled: Svetlana Vladimirovna did not understand how to mess around all day. She had to work to feel comfortable.
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Nikolai and Svetlana Shchelokovs lived very amicably. Their first-born Igor was born in 1946, and Leonid Brezhnev became his godfather. Later, the daughter of the Shchelokovs, Irina, was born.
Nikolai Anisimovich worked very hard: serving in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, then as the first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR, later as the second secretary of the Central Committee of Moldova. In 1966, the family, following Nikolai Shchelokov, who was appointed to the post of Minister of Public Order of the USSR, moved to Moscow. In just two years, Nikolai Shchelokov will head the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Svetlana Vladimirovna tried her best to persuade her husband to resign from the post of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, Nikolai Anisimovich simply could not let his longtime friend Leonid Brezhnev down.
Two facets of being
Irina and Igor Shchelokov, recalling their childhood, invariably talked about the kindness and deepest decency of their father. He was very fair and friendly relations were built in the family. However, in the service, many noted his fair attitude towards people. He did a lot to raise the prestige of the policeman profession and for the social protection of the Ministry of Internal Affairs personnel.
Nikolai Anisimovich personally helped Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the work on the book "August the Fourteenth", spoke in defense of the disgraced writer. Shchelokov was the first to start searching for the remains of the executed members of the royal family.
Galina Vishnevskaya recalled: in the Shchelokovs' house, their wealth was never conspicuous. A standard Romanian bedroom and a Romanian suite in the living room. Later, when the Shchelokovs' apartment was shown on television, she tried to find out if the Shchelokovs had moved somewhere. The atmosphere that Vishnevskaya saw in her friends' apartment was too different from what was subsequently shown on television.
Nikolai Shchelokov, having become Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, took up the reform of the Soviet militia. His decisions were often not understood, but the faithful Svetlana was always there. They began to say that a girl from a poor family, who had seized power, simply could not stop in her love of wealth. On the basis of a passion for jewelry, Svetlana Vladimirovna made friends with Galina Brezhneva.
Bitter finale
After the death of Leonid Brezhnev and the coming to power of Yuri Andropov, personnel purges began. Nikolai Shchelokov, who served as Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was dismissed for shortcomings in his work.
The Shchelokov family was ordered to vacate the dacha in three days and return state property. Some of the household items were lost over 16 years, and the spouses diligently reimbursed the cost of state-owned carpets and sets, projectors and screens. Then they could not even imagine that every penny would be a burden in the case of accusing Nikolai Shchelokov of abuse.
Svetlana Vladimirovna was the first to understand the horror of what was happening. There were rumors that she even attempted the life of Yuri Andropov, and after an unsuccessful attempt she committed suicide. Historians are more inclined to believe that the woman decided to take her own life because of the severe depression associated with the resignation of her husband. Svetlana Vladimirovna Shchelokova shot herself from her husband's award pistol on February 19, 1983.
READ ALSO: Attempts on the life of Soviet General Secretaries: How the conspiracies were revealed and why all attempts were unsuccessful >>
Nikolai Shchelokov was removed from the Central Committee, stripped of the rank of General of the Army, Hero of Socialist Labor and all government awards, except military ones. December 13, 1984 Nikolai Anisimovich took his own life by shooting himself with a hunting rifle. He left a note in which he asked not to touch the children, left instructions on the bill for paying for utilities at the dacha, leaving money for this. The former Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR was dressed in a ceremonial uniform with all the awards.
It was rumored that the note also contained the phrase: "The order is not removed from the dead." Many biographers of Nikolai Shchelokov still believe that the accusations against him were mostly far-fetched. However, there are those who have the opposite point of view.
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