Iosif Ivanovich Butsky

Iosif Ivanovich Butsky was born on 18 October 1919 in the village of Velyka Lykhivka, now in Valky district of Kharkiv region, Ukraine, into a peasant family. He finished seven classes and worked as a lathe operator at the Svet Shakhtyora plant in Kharkiv. He was called up in 1940 and completed a regimental school the same year. He met the war as a rifle section commander near Brest and fought in the defensive battles in Belorussia, Smolensk region and near Moscow, where he served in a special-purpose detachment behind enemy lines in Moscow and Kalinin regions. He joined the Communist Party in 1942. From early 1942 he commanded a platoon of the separate ski battalion of the 134th Rifle Division on the Kalinin Front near Bely, and for the March 1943 fighting, as deputy battalion commander, was awarded the Order of the Red Star. He fought in the Smolensk–Dukhovshchina operation and on the Vitebsk axis, and in 1944 took command of a battalion of the 515th Rifle Regiment; for Kovel he received the Order of the Patriotic War 1st class and for the Puławy bridgehead the Order of the Red Banner. On 14 January 1945, in the breakthrough from the Puławy bridgehead at the start of the Vistula–Oder operation, Major Butsky's battalion of the 515th Rifle Regiment, 134th Rifle Division, 69th Army, 1st Belorussian Front, killed about 300 enemy soldiers and officers and took two batteries. Riding on tanks north-west of Radom, it cut enemy communications and took about 150 prisoners. On 25 January it crossed the Warta and took an enemy strongpoint; on 29 January it defeated a garrison on the Obra and on 4 February crossed the Oder, where it held its line against counter-attacks until the main forces arrived. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 24 March 1945, Major Iosif Ivanovich Butsky was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star no. 5201. In the Berlin operation his battalion cut the Berlin–Frankfurt an der Oder highway and captured an airfield, for which he received the Order of Suvorov 3rd class. He ended the war on the Elbe. From 1946 he was in the reserve as a lieutenant colonel. In 1961 he graduated from the Kyiv food-industry technical school and worked as director of the food combine in Valky. He died on 4 January 1980 and is buried in the village of Butskivka, Valky district.