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 history of my family — all four branches, my mother’s parents and my father’s parents — and my grandfather’s life story is especially important and meaningful to me.

I remember him well; he cared for me as I grew up.

I remember a gentle, calm man who never raised his voice at anyone — least of all at me, a child — who never uttered a crude word, something almost unheard of for a Russian man of his generation. As a child, I took it for granted. But after he was gone, and after I grew up and began reading about the war — and eventually found documents about his military service — I understood who he truly was.

It is enough to say that he was a platoon commander in the Battle of Stalingrad, fighting inside the city itself. He spent thirteen days there before he was wounded. Of the ten thousand soldiers in his unit who entered Stalingrad, only three hundred and twenty survived. He was one of them.

Only as an adult did I realize what it meant: a man who went through that Hell not only kept his sanity, but remained a person of extraordinary kindness — a devoted father and a wonderful grandfather.

And now, as I am a grandfather myself, I try — at least a little — to be for my granddaughter Emily the kind of grandfather Tikhon was for me.