A Short Story About My Grandpa, or Why This Matters to Me
This is my grandfather, Tikhon Basilevsky, my mother’s father (1903–1982). In the photo on the left he is a young man, probably in his thirties. When the Second World War reached the USSR in 1941, he was 38 years old — an agronomist, the father of one son (who is now the renowned Professor Alex Basilevsky, an expert in cosmic geology). The photograph on the right was taken on the very first day of the war for him, 22 July 1941, when he was drafted into the Red Army. I am researching the...
