The True Story of the "Voroshilovsky Shooter": Revenge for Trampled Feelings

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

The film by Stanislav Govorukhin "Voroshilovsky Shooter", released in 1998, quickly became popular. Later, he won many awards and took 34th place in the list of the main films in Russia according to the Afisha magazine. However, few people know that the plot was based on real events, reflected in the novel by Viktor Pronin "Woman on Wednesdays". True, the main avenger was not a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, but a young guy whose hopes for the future were trampled by unknown bandits.

Start

This story took place in the late 1980s in Moscow. Dmitry Danilov grew up in a simple Soviet family, where concepts of honor and dignity were instilled in him from childhood. His father, a master of sports in boxing, taught him to protect the weak, never betray his friends and not surrender to the will of circumstances.

Dmitry learned his lessons well. Therefore, when he saw the street punks stick to an unfamiliar girl, he resolutely stood up for her. He dispersed the hooligans, escorted the girl home. This meeting was happy for both. A courageous young man fell in love with a charming fragile girl Olya, and she reciprocated.

When it was time for Dmitry to join the army, Olya promised to wait for him. Dmitry graduated from the "training", and then was sent to Afghanistan. Letters from Olya came regularly, and the soldier himself wrote to the girl almost daily. There was very little time left until the end of the service, but the long-awaited letters from Moscow stopped coming to him.

There were messages from friends and parents, but from Olya there was not a single line. Dmitry was perplexed: did she not keep her promise and did not wait for him from the army? Stop loving? Met another? But the truth was revealed only after his return from the army.

The terrible truth

At home Dmitry Danilov was waiting for a letter from Olya. The girl's parents did not dare to send the last letter to their daughter Dima in Afghanistan, they gave it to him personally when he went to find out why his beloved stopped writing to him. In the letter, Olya said goodbye to him and announced that she was no longer there. He read these lines a thousand times. And he could not forgive himself for the fact that on that fateful evening he could not be near the one he loved.

At that time, there was a real rampant street crime in the country. The hooligans almost felt themselves to be the masters of life, they robbed and beat passers-by with impunity, committed even more serious crimes. Olga became a victim of one of the gangs.

She returned late at night from class, but never made it home. A group of hooligans attacked her. The girl was dragged into some basement, where she was brutally raped, beaten and robbed. They didn’t even remove the gold earrings from their ears, but tore them out. Olga turned to the police for help, but there she herself was accused, making her guilty only because she was on the street alone late in the evening. Her application was not accepted.

The girl was humiliated and completely crushed. Not knowing how to live with all this on, she made the only correct, as it seemed to her, decision: to commit suicide. Then a farewell letter to a loved one was written. After the point was set, she drank a large dose of sleeping pills.

Good with fists

Having learned the terrible truth, Dmitry was confused for a while. There, in Afghanistan, everything was at least clear: there is an enemy, here is a friend. Now he did not know what to do and how to live on. The answer was not found immediately, and the viewing of the film by Michael Winner "Death Wish" served as a guide to action. The main character, whose wife and daughter have become victims of street criminals, begins to mercilessly kill those who encroach on someone else's life.

Unlike the hero of the film, Dmitry Danilov did not have a revolver, but he found a way out by making a spiked club, reminiscent of the one used by Russian heroes at one time. He did not know who exactly attacked Olga, but decided to take revenge on everyone who attacked defenseless passers-by in the dark.

Dmitry went on the warpath with criminals, starting with Strogino, the very area where the misfortune with Olya happened. Seeing how a gang of gopniks was sticking to a young girl, he drew the bandits' attention to himself and, with almost the first blow, put out of action the leader of the gang, Yuri Kapitonov. As a result of the blow with a spiked club, the bully lost an eye and several teeth, and the rest fled in fear.

Kapitonov was taken by an ambulance, and it soon became clear that he had been repeatedly detained by the police, including on suspicion of gang rape. However, for the time being, he managed to avoid punishment thanks to his father, the prosecutor. Through the efforts of the pope, the young man became not a suspect, but a witness. Only once was he given a suspended sentence for robbing a pensioner whose earrings he pulled out of her ears. The influential father demanded the capture of the criminal who crippled his son.

Arrest and trial

But Danilov was not immediately arrested. For a time, the lone avenger kept all the punks at bay. Soon, statements to the police began to come from the mutilated bandits, who, of course, did not talk about how they attacked passers-by. They didn’t take the old people’s pension, didn’t try to rape the girls, didn’t rip off the jewelry. They just stood when an unknown attacked them, mercilessly waving a strange club. As a result, Dmitry was credited with two killed bandits and several mutilated. And the crime rate in those areas where the avenger appeared has dropped significantly.

Despite the fact that many police officers almost openly sympathized with the unknown crime fighter, Dmitry was nevertheless arrested. At that time, he stood up for a man who was beaten by three, trying to take away bags of food. He killed two of them at once, but did not have time for the third: a police car appeared. The young man tried to run in a car, but he was just learning to drive, and therefore lost control.

During the investigation and at the trial, Danilov did not deny his guilt. He even talked with some pride about how he fought criminals. And he only regretted that he had not managed to punish all the villains. The relatives of the injured hooligans demanded that the lone avenger be sentenced to death. However, Dmitry Danilov was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which he served in full.

What became of him after his release is unknown: either he went to an Old Believer monastery, or settled in a remote village in Altai.

Dmitry Danilov did not have a firearm, unlike the hero of the movie "Voroshilovsky Shooter", who remembered his skills as a sniper to protect his granddaughter. We suggest remembering 10 fascinating films about snipers and their moral choice.