The architect and poet shot dead rushing a BMP as the troops pulled back, the last of the coup's three martyrs
In a video recording, Ilya stands before a tank and shouts at the soldiers: 'What are you doing? People are dying!'
A Moscow Architectural Institute graduate who worked as an architect and wrote poetry posthumously collected in Yevtushenko's Strophes of the Century. During the August 1991 coup, in the early hours of 21 August, he rushed at a BMP in the Tchaikovsky Tunnel after another armored vehicle had been set ablaze and the troops were pulling back; he was shot in the head and died at the scene. Posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union, Krichevsky was one of the coup's only three fatalities, and his Jewish funeral, with a rabbi and an Orthodox priest officiating together, became a public symbol of the new Russia's multi-ethnic identity.
Career Timeline
- 1980Graduated Moscow Secondary School No. 744
- 1986Graduated Moscow Architectural Institute; architect, State Project Institute No. 6
- 1986–1988Served in the Soviet Army (tank troops, junior sergeant)
- 1988–1991Architect, Kommunar design-construction cooperative
- 1991.08.21Killed in the Tchaikovsky Tunnel defending the White House during the August coup