Vladimir Chebotaryov

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Chebotaryov (16 August 1921 – 4 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter. Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (1994). Early years Vladimir Chebotaryov was born in the city of Karachev, Bryansk Oblast. In 1941 he graduated from the Rostov Military School. Soon the Great Patriotic War started. He arrived to the Kiev Military District and was appointed a commanding officer of the artillery battery. During one of the battles he was injured and sent to a war hospital. In several days the hospital was occupied by Nazi forces. Same night Chebotaryov and two other soldiers managed to escape. They spent many days traveling through the Nazi-occupied territory of the modern-day Ukraine to the front line. At one point Vladimir stayed at the Kramarenki khutor at the house of a young woman Ekaterina Kramarenko. Someone reported to the Gestapo, Chebotaryov was arrested and sent to a prison camp. In half a year he managed to make another successful prison break and returned to Ekaterina who had already given a birth to their child – a girl they named Tamara. He then headed back to war. On his way he met a group of Soviet intelligence officers who escorted him to a SMERSH unit. Following a check he was sent to the front line. He finished the war in Budapest in 1945. After the war he went through another check at the NKVD filtration camp, although Ekaterina was told that he was missing in action. By the time Vladimir was released, her family had moved to North Ossetia because of the famine and poor living conditions. Chebotaruov received a similar answer on his request to the Ukrainian SSR: «no one survived». Only in 2008, shortly before his death, a group of journalists from Twenty Years Later (a short-living TV show created by Pavel Chukhray for the TV Tsentr channel) managed to find his daughter and reunite them. Ekaterina Kramarenko had already deceased by that time.