On the 80th anniversary of the Great VICTORY of our people in the Great Patriotic War, we want to tell you about the life and combat path of our fellow countrymen, spouses Nikolai Bagratovich Sarkisyan - a front-line intelligence officer and Anna Aleksandrovna Oganesyan - an employee of special formations of railway troops. Unfortunately, we will not be able to celebrate the next anniversary of the spouses. They have been gone for several years now.

They, like thousands of citizens of our multinational country, made their invaluable contribution to the Great Victory, thanks to whose labor and military exploits our young generation now lives in a free country.

This is a story about the lives of ordinary people, on whose shoulders the Great Victory was forged, our Motherland was restored from the post-war ruins, people who can be proudly called ordinary heroes of the Great Patriotic War.

 

Sargsyan Nikolay Bagratovich was born on December 5, 1920 in the village of Sanahin, Lori district, Armenian SSR, in the family of a railroad worker. His father Bagrat Grigorievich was one of the heads of the railroad in the Caucasus and Armenia, both before and after the revolution. Before the revolution, as an engineer, he supervised the construction of the Yerevan-Tabriz (Iran) railroad and the highest railroad bridge in pre-revolutionary Russia, "Zamarlu". And after the revolution, he was the head of the largest railroad depots in Armenia in the city of Leninakan, now Gyumri, and later, the Sanahin station. The dynasty of railroad workers was continued by all his sons. 

Having lost his mother early, Nikolay Bagratovich left for the city of Tbilisi and entered the railway technical school, which he brilliantly finished on the eve of the war. Six months before the start of the war, he was called up in the Red Army.

 

The Great Patriotic War finds Nikolai Bagratovich in the 20th Motorized Brigade of the 5th Army. Later, he was transferred to the 30th Guards Rifle Regiment.

In September 1941, during the bloody defensive battles in Ukraine, Nikolai Bagratovich received his first wound, but despite this, he remained in the combat units and continued to fight. Later, as the veteran recalled, he remained alive due to the fact that he had been called up in the army six months before the beginning of the war and thanks to his good military training.

After being wounded for the second time in December 1943, he was enlisted in the 2nd Rifle Battalion of the 338th Guards Oder Order of Bohdan Khmelnitsky Rifle Regiment under the command of Guards Lieutenant Colonel Antonov of the 117th Guards Berdichev Rifle Division commanded by Guards Major General Volkovich (1st Ukrainian Front). As part of this regiment, he took Berlin and liberated Prague.

Nikolai Bagratovich received his third wound at the end of the war, in March 1945, but, just like in 1941, he remained in the combat units and, together with his comrades, continued the offensive against the fascists’ lair.

 

Being physically strong, competent and trained fighter, Nikolai Bagratovich is enlisted in the reconnaissance company. Our war veterans know very well what it is like to serve in a reconnaissance company. Many times, they had to go behind the front line, take prisoners, obtain valuable information for the command and return back alive, with valuable cargo. In order not to be discovered, the intelligence officer had to sit in ambush for days in the swamps, in the snow, they could not be detected, overcoming the pain, they solved the assigned combat mission. As a good swimmer, he repeatedly had to swim across the Don, Dnieper, Oder, Spree rivers, carrying out special tasks of the command. Numerous deadly hand-to-hand fights behind enemy lines and in the neutral zone, night sorties - all this is the everyday life of a front-line intelligence officer.

For skillful command of the squad and exemplary performance of combat missions, Sergeant Nikolai Sargsyan was appointed deputy platoon commander of the division's reconnaissance company.

Leafing through the archive military documents of the Ministry of Defense, you are convinced again and again that each episode of Nikolai Bagratovich's combat path deserves a separate description, a separate study.

 

Sergeant Sargsyan was repeatedly awarded high state awards.

One of the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief said: "For exemplary performance of combat missions of the command on the fronts of the fight against the German invaders and the shown valor and courage, award Guards Sergeant, rifle squad commander, deputy platoon commander Sargsyan Nikolai Bagratovich the Order of "Glory" ....".

 

Nikolai Bagratovich was awarded 23 military orders and medals, including the Order of Glory of the 2nd and 3rd degrees, which are especially valued by soldiers, the medals "For Courage", "For Military Merit", the Order of the Patriotic War, as well as the medals "For the Capture of Berlin", "For the Liberation of Prague", "For the Liberation of Warsaw", "For the Defense of the Caucasus" and many others.

 

Here are just a few excerpts from the reports of commanders describing his exploits:

– “In battles with the German invaders, on 17.04.1945, he showed courage and bravery: sneaking up to a pillbox, he threw grenades, which allowed the infantry to advance. He personally killed 9 Nazis…” 

– “In battles from 16.04.1945 to 08.05.1945. under enemy fire, carried 15 seriously wounded soldiers and officers with their weapons from the field…”

– “During the breakthrough of the enemy’s defense on 16.04.1945, he crossed the water line of the Neisse River as part of reconnaissance soldiers and in a counter-attack, he killed the crew of an enemy machine gun with fire from his personal weapon, thereby ensuring the advance of a rifle company…”

– “When repelling an enemy counterattack, on the approaches to the Spree River, which were trying to break through and join up with their scattered units on 18.04.1945, he went into the enemy’s rear and, with a sudden attack, scattered up enemy infantry into two squads with heavy fire and thus contributing to the fulfillment of the command’s combat mission…”

- "In a night offensive battle, during a breakthrough of the enemy's defense on the approaches to Berlin, in a wooded area, he was the first to discover a group of well-camouflaged German machine gunners who were preventing the rifle unit from advancing. He killed them..."

- "In street battles in Berlin on April 29, 1945, he destroyed 8 Germans in hand-to-hand combat..."

He participated in the defense, and then in the liberation of our hometown - Rostov-on-Don.The division in which Nikolai Bagratovich served directly participated in such famous battles of the Great Patriotic War as the Kerch-Eltigen landing operation, the Zhitomir-Berdichev, Proskurov-Chernivtsi, Lvov-Sandomierz, Sandomierz-Silesian, Lower Silesian and finally the Berlin and Prague operations. 

Nikolai Bagratovich, during the capture of Berlin, fought his way to the Brandenburg Gate, and then took part in the liberation of Prague, where he met the Great Victory.

 

All the pain and joy of Victory are preserved in rare frontline photographs. Tears of Victory are both the joy and the greatness of the liberating soldiers, the victorious soldiers!!!

 

After the war, Nikolai Bagratovich worked in various leadership positions in the national economy: he was the chief power engineer at the largest factories, and then in the management of the Armenian railway. At the same time, in the pedagogical field, he passed on his rich experience to the younger generation in schools.

 

The fate of Nikolai Bagratovich's wife, Anna Alexandrovna, is no less interesting. She was born on January 25, 1923 in the city of Ordzhonikidze in a large family of Armenian refugees from the city of Kars, Western Armenia, who escaped the Turkish Genocide of 1915 and found a second homeland in the lands of Kuban and Don.

 

Having finished school with honors, she dreamed of entering the university, but the war began... Like many of her classmates and peers, she volunteered for the front, despite the fact that all four of her elder brothers had already been called up in the army. Secretly from her parents, Anna Aleksandrovna took signalmen courses. Her parents, who were pensioners, at first managed to stop her, literally "remove" her from the military echelon heading to the front.

It was difficult to persuade yesterday's schoolgirl Anna to stay. She agreed only because she needed to help her olderly parents, raise the young children of her brothers, who had already been fighting on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. She went to work on the railroad.

But already from the end of 1942, Anna Alexandrovna was in active army units and served in the 135th MED (military exploitation department) of a special formation of railway troops operating in the front section of the North Caucasus.

 

For services to the Motherland, Anna Oganesyan was awarded 11 medals, including "For the Defense of the Caucasus".

 

Let's say that grief did not pass this large family by.

Only brother Vasily, a career communications officer who had participated in the Soviet-Finnish War, returned alive.

One brother, Aram (a political worker), died during the defense of the city of Malgobek, and the other, Hayk, during the Battle of Stalingrad.

After the war, Anna Alexandrovna entered the Yerevan State University. She worked all her life as a senior engineer in the management of the Armenian railway ZKV railway.

 

Nikolai Bagratovich and Anna Alexandrovna are rested in Yerevan, in the family pantheon, where Anna's parents and brother are also buried.

 

And finally, we would like to add that Nikolai Bagratovich and Anna Alexandrovna raised wonderful children: Anaida, Sergey, Armen, Gaor and 12 grandchildren, 6 great-grandchildren. Thus, the son Armen Ter-Sarkisyan now lives and works in Moscow, is the President of the board of the interregional Center for Legal Reforms "Dictatorship of Lawfulness", actively participates in the life of the Armenian diaspora both in Russia and around the world.

In January 2014, in Paris, at the 1st session of the National Assembly (Parliament) of Western Armenia of the 1st convocation, he was elected as the President of the Parliament. In September 2018, 101 deputies of the Parliament of the 2nd convocation, and in September 2023, 135 deputies of the Parliament of Western Armenia of the 3rd convocation. re-elected Armen Ter-Sarkisyan as the President of the National Assembly (Parliament) of Western Armenia.

Grandson Vahagn, having finished the Moscow laboratory school No. 351 with the gold medal, entered the department of international relations of the history department of the Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, continued his education in graduate school, which he successfully completed. Now he runs an international innovation company.

This is the story of a simple family of our fellow countrymen, which can be an example to follow and be proud of, both for the entire Armenian people and for all the peoples of our vast Motherland. 

 

Vardan Abrahamyan — military journalist, reserve lieutenant colonel

Saida Oganyan — ethnographer journalist

 

Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Yerevan

May 9, 2025

Photo from the home archive of a front-line soldier

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