About project

The path to the creation of the website you’re currently viewing was quite long. And even winding.

After Andrei Vasilyevich’s death, his name was gradually almost forgotten. General Khrulyov Street in Leningrad and a memorial plaque on 9 Gorky Street in Moscow — and that’s all that remained to remind us of General of the Army A.V. Khrulev after his death. Indeed, his birthdays and anniversaries were now celebrated mainly within the close family circle, and even the centenary of his birth in 1992 was practically forgotten—apparently, there was no еtime. Since 1962—and by 1992, nearly 30 years had passed — the Museum of the USSR Armed Forces once organized an evening dedicated to A.V. Khrulev’s 80th birthday. And the following year, thanks to the efforts of the renowned Soviet poet A. Surkov, an evening was held at the House of Writers. And that’s practically all.

Efforts to prepare and publish Andrei Vasilyevich’s memoirs also proved futile, and after their preparation for publication was politely put on hold, they remained in the family for many decades. Only a very small portion of them was used in a small book by writer I. S. Shiyan, published in 1980. It seemed that no one needed anything anymore. And there was no interest…

A light at the end of the tunnel of oblivion began to appear with the arrival of General of the Army V. I. Isakov to command the Rear Services of the Armed Forces in 1997. Initially, thanks to his efforts, the A. V. Khrulev Prize was established in 2000 by the Academy of Military Sciences. Then, in 2003, a significant event took place: the Military Academy of Logistics and Transport in St. Petersburg was named after A.V. Khrulev. Then, in 2004, the Ministry of Defense established the “General of the Army Khrulev” medal. Finally, in 2004, with the direct support of General of the Army V.I. Isakov, the renowned Soviet and Russian writer and Hero of the Soviet Union V.V. Karpov prepared and published the book “General of the Army Khrulev. Everything for Victory. The Great Quartermaster”. This book incorporated parts of Andrei Vasilyevich’s memoirs, which had been preserved in the family for many years. Unfortunately, another book, “People’s Commissariat Khrulev,” written by major (retired) A.D. Marchenko and published in 2007, went virtually unnoticed by the general public and military history buffs.

Gradually, the family began to question the full publication of the memoirs. Indeed, culling individual chapters from the book without publishing it in its entirety could not be considered fair to Andrei Vasilyevich’s memory. He worked on his memoirs for a long time, expending considerable effort on revising and editing them, while someone else, without him, decided what to make public and what to leave in a file. Moreover, publishing individual chapters of A.V. Khrulev’s memoirs by other authors also cannot be considered a rational way to use them in practice — it’s difficult to imagine Andrei Vasilyevich would have agreed to share the results of his labor with someone else. At the same time, preparing the memoirs for publication in their entirety proved more difficult than initially expected…

It’s clear that Andrei Vasilyevich never completed the manuscript of his memoirs. Moreover, over the course of half a century, something could have gotten lost. And even a single missing page would have meant that the text would require revision in some places. But the author is no longer alive — how could anyone edit, add to, and then publish such a revised text in his name? What would be the value of such a book?

Ultimately, the family decided that attempts to prepare the manuscript for publication were pointless. Besides the manuscript itself, they also had a large number of photographs, dozens of albums, and numerous folders with letters and documents — but what to do with them? It seemed like nothing — who would care? Moreover, some family members always maintained a “keep a low profile” attitude. It would have remained there, perhaps for the next 50 years…

However, in 2017, the situation with the manuscript changed dramatically. Then, the Directorate of Logistics of the Armed Forces, headed by General of the Army D.V. Bulgakov, decided to hold celebratory events in St. Petersburg and Moscow to commemorate the 125th anniversary of General of the Army A.V. Khrulev. It became clear that there was a critical shortage of materials for this – photographs, documents, and Andrei Vasilyevich’s personal belongings were needed. Once much had been gradually collected, the question arose: how to make it all visible to a large number of people? After all, many of them are likely interested in military history?

Thus, the family gradually came to the conclusion that publishing a memoir alone, even if it were possible, would not resolve the issue of familiarizing a wide audience of readers and historians with Andrei Vasilyevich’s legacy — too many documents and photographs would be left “behind the scenes.” After much debate, we concluded that this task could not be accomplished without a website; currently, only the global web has the necessary format to host all the available materials.

Thus, the website you are viewing today was created. We may not yet have been able to publish all the available documents and photographs, and some of the materials we have published contain typos and/or inaccuracies. This is due both to the tight deadline (we had to complete the project by September 2017) and the need to sort through Andrei Vasilyevich’s vast archive of documents and letters. For this very reason, we’ve included a comment section at the bottom of almost every page on the site — perhaps readers will be able to share previously unknown information or simply point out an annoying error.

A separate topic on the site is, of course, Andrei Vasilyevich’s memoirs. In fact, the question of his memoirs and their publication was a key part of the site’s creation. Ultimately, the memoirs were not only assembled from numerous family folders but also sorted (with some chapters and pages being rearranged randomly) and then prepared for publication. You can read more about this in the “Memoirs” section. Here, we’ll simply note that the scope and complexity of this work proved greater than the tight deadline allowed.

But one way or another, we tried our best for you, and the outcome, and whether it worked, is up to you to decide.