The GREATEST HERO Of The Soviet Union: Shavarsh Karapetyan
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First month is $30. Bring your number and ID. Offer not available if with T-Mobile or with Metro in the past 180 days. Hello, my friends. Takuya here. And before it is that we get into today's episode, I just want to go ahead and clarify something from the beginning. This is actually this week's YouTube episode, which when I went in and started to make this episode, I was trying to go and get back into my Badasses of History series, something that I had actually started out doing on TikTok and people loved. Unfortunately, it seems that the YouTube algorithm itself failed.

was not so kind. It was not nearly as appreciated. But I know that for you all who listen here to the podcast, that this is something that you enjoy. You love hearing about these varying different figures of history who did amazing things, who were grand figures of history that perhaps people maybe haven't even heard of in the first place. So the story that I'm going to be telling you here today

This is perhaps one of the greatest Armenian heroes that has ever existed. Not from actions on the battlefield, nothing like that. Specifically from saving people's lives. This person is a hero in every sense of the word, and I hope that by the end of today's episode, you will understand that. Thank you all so much for your support and listening. I appreciate all it is that you do, and with that, I hope you enjoy this episode.

My friends, it has been far too long since we did an episode on badasses of history. And quite frankly, I'm telling you all this right now, for those of you who are tuning in who have seen any of the things that I've done here in the past, if I have to report on one more depressing and horrific thing in this world and then tell the story of just how bad it got and why it got that way in the first place, I genuinely might lose my mind.

Hello Ron Jones!

Because look, of all the life-changing experiences that sports can bring to the lives of athletes, there is nothing that can quite compare to the feeling when you win a medal and you stand on a podium in victory. The Olympics are an amazing thing. But today, we're not talking about that. Today, we're going to be telling you about one of those prospective athletes who set aside his dream in order to be able to save the lives of others. And in doing so, he lost the opportunity to ever compete again. He sacrificed everything.

I will say this now and repeatedly, and by the end of this video, you will most likely agree with me that Shavarzh Karapetyan is a hero of the Soviet Union.

So what is it then that I mean by that? Well my friends, to start off, let's go ahead and introduce the hero of our story today. Born in 1953 in Kirovakin, now modern day Vanadur, Armenia, Sharvash Karapetyan and his siblings were always playing sports as children. This was encouraged heavily by their father, Vladimir Karapetyan, who really hoped that his children were going to be the ones that were going to be able to take to the Olympics to celebrate and show off the glory of his lineage.

In fact, he even moved them all to Armenia's largest city and capital of Yerevan when Shavarsh was just a young boy. When he did this, he got all of them enrolled in gymnastic classes in order to make them limber and strong. This was seen as a good foundational thing. It was very common back in those days to take children as young as five or six and to first

place them into gymnastics, and then later the coaches would tell you, okay, well, this is where they are now. This is what sports they probably should go and play. Chivarge hadn't started as young as all the other gymnasts, so being a gymnastics champion was ruled out. It was something that you had to start from a much younger age and continuously dedicate yourself towards.

He would never catch up to his age range, according to his coaches. They just didn't think that he was going to be able to do anything. So his father was told that Shavarsh was agile and strong, yes, but it was mostly in his legs, which caused someone to recommend that, oh, he should try to be a swimmer. Now, Armenia had never really been a serious world player in swimming, so this probably caught Shavarsh's father by surprise. Armenia's greatest champions had mainly been on the board in things like chess.

But in terms of Olympic sports, they'd had a long history of success in sports such as wrestling, weightlifting, artistic gymnastics, and even boxing. Surely his son was going to be good enough for one of those. But no, no, it wasn't going to work out.

Eventually, his father caved in and decided to try and follow the advice that he'd received. He got Shavar signed up for some swimming classes where he showed some early promise. He had a powerful kick. This guy's legs were strong and naturally he swam underwater longer without needing a breath than most of the other swimmers did. It was some pretty good early signs.

And so throughout his adolescence and teen years, Chavar's just kept on swimming. And while he wasn't quite as fast or as flexible as the best swimmers, remember that he did excel at two things greatly. One, holding his breath, and two, pushing water with his leg.

Those two factors made him the perfect choice for the hottest new sport in water in the early 1970s, fin swimming. While training in a swimming pool at the age of 17, Shavarsh would randomly meet a swimming pool lifeguard by the name of Liparit Almousakian. Little did he know that this chance encounter was going to alter the course of his entire life. You see, Almousakian happened to have just been selected by the Soviet Union to expand Armenia's presence in international water sports.

And he was quite excited at the raw talent that this young man had and just how perfect he was for fin swimming. And so he would become Shavarsh's coach and mentor. Eventually, Shavarsh would also call him just Lipo. They became fast friends.

Lipo immediately suggested for his young student to abandon traditional swimming and to switch to fin swimming, which didn't really require flexibility and speed as much as it required strength and stamina, which, as you can probably guess from what we've discussed so far, just so happened to have been Shavarsha's strength.

To explain this, fin swimming is a sport that combines swimming underwater with the use of fins and includes swimming with a scuba apparatus or just by holding one's breath. There's two classes of fin swimming. You have the swimming pool type, and then there's also long distance, also called open water. Both traditional swimming fins would be used, as well as the new technological advance of Shavarsha's day, the monofin.

To elaborate further, surface fin swimming is swimming on the surface of the water using a mask, a snorkel, and monofin, with races held at distances from 50 meters all the way up to 1,500 meters. Another type, apnea fin swimming, is underwater swimming in a swimming pool using a mask, monofin, and holding one's breath. All apnea races are held at a distance of 50 meters. That is it. You don't want to go further than that because obviously you don't want people to just drown, which

which could happen. The final type to mention here then is immersion fin swimming, which is underwater swimming using a mask, monofin, and underwater breathing apparatus while in a swimming pool. These are held in distances of 100, 200 meters, and 400 meters. Obviously because of the things that are involved in it, these are not conducted in open water. You know, for safety and security. Chavarge himself would compete in all of these races.

But his best event by far was the apnea fin swimming, and he actually had a good reason why. A horrific and terrifying reason as to why. You see, for context of this, some years before his switch to fin swimming, at the age of 15, Shavarsh was walking home one day when a group of young criminals surrounded him and began to bully him. This quickly developed into attempted murder.

Now, how did they almost kill him? You might think, well, it's bullies on the street. Maybe they punched him and he fell and hit his head on the sidewalk or something along those lines. You know, some kind of actual physical altercation. And sure, that kind of thing does happen in street fights and outside of bars across the world nightly, yes. But no, no, what these guys did is they grabbed him, tied a rope around his body, and tied a massive rock around his neck, and then threw him into a lake.

Yeah, at this point, we're talking about something that has easily moved beyond simple bullying and into actual attempted murder. Yes. But the thing is, when they threw him into that lake, there were three things that they did not know about Shavarsh Karpetyan. First, unlike most people in Armenia at the time, Shavarsh not only knew how to swim, which that's another thing, most people in Armenia didn't know how to swim at this time, but he also was amazing at it.

The second thing they didn't know about Shavarsh was that he was freaking strong. And the third thing they didn't know about him is that he had the willpower to actually do something about his situation. And so Shavarsh, this young man, would writhe and rage against the weight that was pulling him down as he was tossed into the lake. He squirmed and just managed to get the ropes from around his body, but not enough to quite untie the huge rock that was pulling him down to the bottom of the lake. Looking up, he said that he could see the light. Down,

Well, down was nothing but darkness. He hit the bottom and shoved off the floor of the lake with all of his might, dragging the rock with him. In moments, he managed to reach the safety of the surface and took what probably felt like the biggest breath that you could possibly have in your life. And he managed to do all of that,

while being weighed down with the rock still. He was that strong of a swimmer. So when Lipo came around and said, hey, I'd like you to just start doing this sport where you see how long you can hold your breath while swimming, it could have gone over horribly. I mean, PTSD is a real thing, and it's possible that the trauma of the event would still have lingered, but no. When given the opportunity, Shavar saw it.

and he wanted to be a world-class champion. This was really going to be his only option because by that point in time, the very highly corrupt Soviet Olympic officials had already told Shvarsh and his father that he was not going to get to compete in the Olympics even if he improved his speed. This was also due to some internal discrimination towards Armenians by Russian officials who typically wanted to promote their favorites to try out for the Olympics and he was not going to be a part of that.

Shavarsh essentially didn't know the right people and had fallen victim to nepotism and favoritism, which was, again, the common thing within the Soviet Union. But Lipo, Lipo offered him a way to still become a world champion, internal politics be damned. So it is then, my friends, that Shavarsh immediately began training intensely in order to reach world champion shape, as well as to make his father proud.

In a scene reminiscent of the Rocky movies, you could argue, he would typically run up to 18 miles a day wearing a heavy backpack filled with sand. He would jog with boards strapped onto his feet, and he was constantly practicing holding his breath. As for swimming techniques, Lipo would teach him about taking five quick inhales before diving underwater in order to reduce the body's impulsive need to take a breath.

Interestingly enough, this form of hyperventilation is used by freedivers all around the world today, but this was the early 1970s. It wasn't really all that common at this point. Learning to breathe like this is something that changed the game for Chavarche, and his talent and skills would quickly shine brightly.

Soon, his hard work started reaping rewards. Karapetyan would win gold at the 50 and 100-meter sprints of the 1972 European Championships in Moscow, prompting a Soviet magazine to rave, quote, It's safe to say we'll see this young athlete from Armenia at many more major championships.

This was set to be the start of something amazing. Then, in 1974, something even more insane happened. See, Chavarish had an early brush with death that could have taken him out right then and there. He was riding a bus to a training center when the driver experienced some vehicle trouble and got out to take a look. Unfortunately, for the nearly fully occupied bus and its riders, the driver went and forgot to put the emergency brake on.

Since the bus was on an incline, it immediately began to roll backwards towards a massive gorge. Assessing the situation instantly, Chavarche would spring into action. He jumped out of his seat and climbed up to the driver's seat, slamming on the brakes and stopping the bus from falling down the gorge by just a few meters of road left before the drop.

In doing so, Karpetian had just saved dozens of lives, including his own. You may wonder then, looking at this, okay, well, what happened out of this heroic action? Was he celebrated? No. No, he wasn't. Shavarsh just got out at his stop and went on about his day like normal. That's it. The other passengers, though, no, they remember what it is that he did, and they told the news reporters. Shavarsh didn't stick around for recognition of cameras, though, because he didn't do it for the acclaim. He did it because...

Because, here's the thing, he is, in all sense of the word, a hero of the Soviet Union. After all of this, Shavars would then go on to finally compete in fin swimming competitions, where he absolutely slaughtered everyone. Karapetian became a merited Master of Sports of the USSR and broke 11 world records.

world records in less than three years in fin swimming like seriously if you go and look at some of the pictures of him just look up this guy's name and see him wearing all of his medals it really is insane he managed to acquire seven soviet championships 13 european championships and 17 world championships for a total of 37 gold medals by the time that he would end up retiring i

And the craziest part of it all, though? He could have easily won nearly twice as many medals and championships during his career if it wasn't cut short at the age of 24 by the events of September 16th, 1976. This, my friends, is where our badass becomes a hero. Despite his streak of wins, the Soviet Sports Federation had dropped him from the team bound for the Fin Swimming World Championship in 1976.

Sadly, this was most likely due to him being Armenian, which, as we already mentioned, the whole internal discrimination thing was a factor within the Soviet Union. An awesome side note to that is that the same time that they denied Shavarsh, the Soviet sports officials offered Lipo the opportunity to train the USSR national team for the world championships, as he was one of the best coaches in the entire Soviet Union.

And when they did this, he flat out refused to take the offer out of sheer solidarity to his student and protege, Chavarche. He was not going to do this. Chavarche, of course, was still upset, but he was not defeated. So to save his career, he dug down deep and trained even harder to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he belonged on the world stage.

This guy would go and train almost every single day. And on that fateful day in September of 1976, that's exactly what he was doing. Gervaulx had just completed swimming practice and was doing a 13-mile run with a 45-pound bag of sand on his back.

And he was doing so accompanied by Lipo and his brother Kamal. Like, honestly, when I go and describe this, I can't even begin to really explain how this whole thing just makes me think. If you know Dragon Ball Z, this is Goku-level training. This is the weighted armor running around and doing all these exercises and things in order to prepare yourself as an athlete. Like, this guy is doing that. But while running around the massive artificial lake in the middle of the country's capital, Yerevan, they heard a horrendous crash.

crash. Chavarish looked up and he saw Yerevan trolleybus number 15 had just run off the road and plunged straight into the lake. As for the cause of the crash, witnesses would later give conflicting statements about how exactly it had happened, saying that the driver had either argued with a passenger about making a stop or had been hit in the head by a pickpocket or something else, something happened. Chavarish would later state, quote, it was scary at first. It was such a loud sound as if a bomb had gone off.

But either way, it's at that moment that his instincts took over. Shavarsh would throw off his backpack and race down to the water's edge. He told his brother, quote, we can save them, come on. And both brothers stripped down to their underwear and jumped into the cold water. And this, my friends, is where it gets even wilder. That is because the trolley bus didn't just, you know, gently roll down a slight incline and then end up in the water. No, this thing had fallen off of the top of a dam.

And now it was roughly 25 meters offshore, around 80 feet at a depth of 10 meters or 33 feet. This thing was deep. The water, of course, because of this was murky and hard to see through. It was later tested and found to be infested with sewage as well as chemical pollutants. But Chavarche didn't care. Not at that moment. He just wanted to be able to see beyond.

Finally reaching the spot where the bus was sinking to the bottom, he took his five breaths and dove down deep into the frigid reservoir, searching for survivors. What Chavarche didn't know, though, was that there were 92 passengers on board that trolley bus. And at this point, he was their only hope.

He finally reached the trolley bus, now resting at the bottom of the reservoir, and encountered his first major problem. See, one of the first things that was noticed is that he saw a cloud of bubbles that was rising up from the trolley bus, which this indicated to him that there still was air inside the vehicle, but at the same time, that did not mean that the trolley bus was watertight. By no means was this the case. It was very quickly taking on

water. There were no openings, and so the passengers were unable to get themselves out while the bus rapidly flooded. As he reached the bus, he would firmly grab a hold of its roof and kick in its rear window. In doing so, a shard of glass from that rear window would slice his leg clean open. As he would later say, quote, the most difficult thing was to knock out the rear window of the trolley bus. Of course, I was hurt by the glass. The pain was unbearable, but then I did not think about it.

I understood that there was little time. End quote. The trolley bus was filling with water, my friends, and now at a more rapid rate since the rear window had been knocked out in the first place. As for what would happen then, Shavarsh Karapetyan would then spend the next 20 minutes saving lives. He dove down, and each time he went, the water was made murkier by the kicking and thrashing of both he and the people that he was rescuing.

He would swim inside the trolley through the broken glass and grab blindly for the first person that he could feel. Doing so, he would then take them out the window that he came in and guide them up to the roof of the bus. Then he would hold onto them and plant his feet firmly on the ground of the bus and give a massive push off the roof like a swimmer launching off their starting block.

At the speed that they were moving, and mind you, remember, they were 33 feet underwater, he was managing to average about 25 seconds per person that he rescued. When they reached the surface, he would pass them off to his brother, Kamo, who would drag them to the water's edge.

Quickly, a boat was found and used to make the process quicker for Kamo and allowed him to stay treading water above the wreck and tending to survivors while Shavarsh would continue to dive. You may expect at this point that when I talk about the actual number of people that he saved that it's probably going to be like three or five or eight, maybe ten, but

But no, all in all, Shavarsh Karpechen would manage to save 46 people's lives that day. 26 of them were able to escape and swim to safety simply because he kicked the big back window open. Another 20 he found in the darkness and carried up to safety.

When I talk about this, my friends, any normal person would have either taken way longer to save far fewer people or had been absolutely gassed after the first few were brought up and never done anything more. Perhaps they would not have had the strength to swim while pulling someone who may not even know how to swim in the first place.

But the thing is, there are only a few thousand people on the planet that can hold their breath that long repeatedly, and even fewer who have the strength and stamina to pull off such a massive rescue while holding their breath. Out of all of history's random occurrences and weird things where someone was at the right place at the right time, this has to be near the very top

of the list because there is arguably no other scenario that I can think of that would be the perfect person for a rescue being immediately in an area to be able to respond. All of the people on that trolley bus should have died.

But half of them didn't, and it is thanks exclusively to Chavarche. In fact, what is even crazier about this is that the only reason that he stopped going down and pulling people out was because after 20 minutes, the people that he was bringing up to the surface could not be revived, as their brains by this point had been without oxygen for simply far too long. Because of this, the first responders on the scene begged him to please stop going down and trying to save any more people.

Shavarsh would agree, but he still decided to try and save just one more person. To save time getting down there, instead of his standard five quick breaths, he only took one. And so, then, for literally the 40th time in 20 minutes, he went down to the pitch black trolley bus to the bottom of the lake and reached out for one more person.

His lungs were burning, his muscles were aching, his eyes burned, and his leg was bleeding badly. Yet, the coldness of the water kept him from bleeding out quickly. He grabbed for anything. An arm, a coat, a leg maybe, anything that he could get his hands on. And then he finally felt something and grabbed onto it, making his way back to the top of the bus and kicking off of it with his last remaining burst of strength. As he came towards the surface that time, though, his vision started getting wonky.

and he realized that he might just drown. But he managed to reach the surface just before passing out. As he tried to pass the person to Kamo, both Shavarsh and his brother realized that what he'd grabbed was actually not even a person at all. It was a seat cushion from one of the trolley's bench seats. To this very day, it is something that would haunt him. As he would later say, quote, I could have saved a life instead. That seat still haunts me in my nightmares.

At this point in time, my friends, a crane had arrived. And ironically, when we talk about this, as if he hadn't done enough that day, the people that arrived with the crane then had the nerve to go and ask Shavarsh if he would go down again to the bottom of the lake to tie the cables around the bus so that they could haul it out of the reservoir.

While we may think of it as insulting, at this point in time he'd sufficiently caught his breath by that point, so he did agree to do it and went back down into the deep black with the cables in tow. Then, when he did this, he had to come back up and get a crowbar, with which he would then use to knock out the windows on the bus so he could have something to tie the cables around.

Also, by the way, remember when I mentioned before that he had saved a total of 46 people before? Well, some of those people he had saved had not actually stuck around to receive care or assistance. They simply walked off, likely in shock. So, in actuality, the truth of the matter is there were not 46 people up there that he had managed to save. There was over 50.

After his heroic feats, Shavarsh would go to the shore of the reservoir, and his father had just arrived there. He had heard about the trolleybus crash and was worried that his sons may have taken that very trolley on their way back from training, but no, he discovers his son having saved everyone. Looking at his son, cold and freezing with a massive gash down his leg...

his father would gleam with pride. He would take off his own shirt, and he would tie it around his son's leg to stop the bleeding. And after this dramatic ordeal, you may wonder, did Shavarsh stick around for notoriety or news stories or anything? Did he expect a reward? No.

Why? Because none of that matters. Chivarsh is a hero of the Soviet Union, and that's all that he needed. Vladimir Karapetyan would take his boys home. They had done well and brought great honor to their family. But at this point, the ordeal was just beginning for Chivarsh. Later that night, it was very quickly realized that the gash on his leg was far more serious than previously thought.

and very quickly afterwards he would develop a 104 degree Fahrenheit fever. From the combination of the heavily polluted water and the extended time spent in the freezing water, he developed double pneumonia and sepsis, a serious poisoning of the blood. It would be three weeks before he was able to even walk again. He was admitted to the intensive care unit and remained in the hospital for 45 days.

So obviously at this point, that is not great. But an interesting thing about this incident is that, as you can probably imagine that would happen with the Soviet Union, the whole thing was immediately covered up by the Soviet government. Yes, what are you talking about? There was never a trolleybus in Lake Yerevan. What are you talking about, comrade? Soviet transportation doesn't suffer accidents of this kind. That is only in capitalist hellhole.

Yeah, we can probably imagine that those are the kinds of things that would have been said by a Soviet official to anyone who asked any pesky questions about trolley bus number 15. As Karapetian would later state, immediately after the accident, some people wanted to publish an article in a newspaper, but this was not allowed. In the USSR, trolley buses were not supposed to fall into water. End quote. Yes,

Yes, my friends, here's the thing that you really need to understand. What we are talking about here right now, this was the height of the Cold War, and the Soviets frequently would downplay or conduct media blackouts concerning any major disasters that might reflect incompetence, corruption, or lack of concern for their citizens, all three of which were very common in the first place, I might add. Accidents like this would give the Americans and their allies fuel for propaganda that the USSR was weak or heartless or just...

incompetent or stupid. So, and I kid you not, the official line from the Soviet government was that all of this was just a terrible rumor. Not an accident, not sabotage, not anything else like that. No, no, no. It was a rumor. It didn't really happen. The local communist newspaper simply printed a notice that there had been a fatal trolley accident. That's it. The people whose lives Karpetian had saved didn't even know their rescuer's name. And

And so, Chavarche would get no public recognition whatsoever for this event. But, the hundreds of witnesses and the more than 20 survivors that Chavarche had pulled out of that lake, they were still around. And over the next months, they would tell their stories.

Eventually, my friends, Shavarsh was finally released from the hospital and would go back to his training. The problem though, at this point, is that his body was never going to be the same again. His respiratory system was permanently damaged from the toxic waters of the lake. His lungs created massive amounts of mucus that he would constantly cough up even while wearing his scuba gear, which honestly sounds like a nightmare. His stamina was just not the same anymore, and he would get migraine headaches randomly. He also had a lot of

He also felt a strange new aversion to water. He wasn't really afraid of it. That's not exactly the right word. He just hated being in it. Now, this seriously sounds like the effects of PTSD, but there's not really any confirmation of this, so it's merely a bit of a conjecture on our part.

It all is just really awful, but here's the thing though. Chavarche kept on competing. The indomitable spirit of this man refused to give up, even though his sport had never been more challenging for him. For a handful of races, Chavarche Carpetian forged through hell to try to keep doing what he was best at. He even set his last world record in the 400 meter event at the USSR championship, where he won gold.

And then he won a gold and three silvers at the European Championship in Hungary. But after that race where he won two medals, he knew it was time to hang up the monofin and find something else to do with his life. He just couldn't physically do it anymore. Yes, he wanted to. His spirit was telling him to do it. But his flesh couldn't keep up with it. He would retire from sports and would get married. That would be the end.

The question remains then, I guess, why would he even try to compete for a few more races after all this, even though he was personally suffering so much? Remember what we've said: Shavarsh Karapetyan is a hero of the Soviet Union. This was his entire existence. But that heroic recognition would not come immediately. In what feels like a criminally long period of time, six years would go by.

And then an article was published in the Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda Daily, this being with a headline reading, quote, a champion's underwater battle. The daring and dangerous rescue was finally told for the Soviet Union, for all the world to know what it is that had happened.

Of course, that being said, since this is the Soviet Union, it was censored incredibly heavily by the government to not mention any of the deaths in the trolley, so the story made it seem like Chavarish had saved everyone on board, that literally everyone got out, but no, that's obviously not the case, it's just how the Soviet would operate.

But still, that first article would then lead to more, and more, more. Before long, everyone in Armenia knew who Shavarsh Karapetyan was. And not really for his swimming, but for being a hero. He would receive over 60,000 letters in the following months and years, thanking him for his sacrifice.

His own wife didn't even know about what he had done, and the way she found out was by reading the article in the newspaper. For anyone who was wondering, yeah, at this point they had been married for like a year, and that was never brought up. Shavarsh told her that essentially they hadn't.

talked about it simply because the topic had never come up. Like this guy never once, after a moment of like drinking, just told the story of like, oh guys, man, remember back in the day, I totally did this thing. Like any normal person would. This guy didn't just have records when it came to breaking things for swimming. He had world-class levels of humility as well. It is here then, my friends, that the Soviet government would finally decide to recognize him as one of their bravest sons.

The Kremlin would award him the Order of the Badge of Honor and the Medal for the Salvation of the Drowning. We're going to get back to the medals here in a bit. Because more is set to happen, amazingly enough, with everything that we've talked about. Because nine years after the trolleybus accident, Chavarche was working in downtown Yerevan as a safety inspector,

when he apparently decided that he just couldn't help from saving even more lives, because that's of course bound to happen. This time, it was at the city's famous sports and concert complex, which had caught on fire. Chavarche happened to be there at the moment of the fire breaking out, and without a moment's thought of hesitation or anything, he rushed in to help extinguish the flames and brought multiple people out to safety. He very nearly died bringing out the last person,

but a passing taxi driver had stopped to witness the blaze and ran in to help him and the person get out.

Still, Shavars would end up with major burns and was in the hospital for over two weeks from smoke inhalation. Why would he do this in the first place, considering everything he had been through? The fact that his body was not like what it had been before. Why would he still do this? For those that may be putting into the comment section right now for the obvious rhetorical question, you can say it with me. Shavars Karapetian is a hero of the Soviet Union.

With time, my friends, recognition for the Armenians' heroics came from both the Soviet Union and abroad. In 1986, the Minor Planet Committee would approve the naming of an asteroid in his honor, the 3027 Shavarsh. This had been discovered in 1978 by astronomers at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, and they would name it after him. Other global recognitions for Karpetyan would include a World Fair Play Prize,

But of course, at this time now, we're talking about the 1980s, late 1980s, and eventually, the Soviet Union, for all of its size, was not going to last forever. After the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 90s, Shavars would move to Moscow and open up a shoe store. Proving that he definitely had a good sense of humor, he would actually go and name the store Second Breath, which, look, I know from everything I'm describing in here, I can't even make this up. It is that kind of story, my friend.

And while he had moved on in his middle to older years, the people who lived in the former Soviet Union remembered Shavarsh, though. And I'm happy to say that when the Olympic Games were held in Sochi, Russia in 2014, Shavarsh Karpetian was finally given the respect that he deserved.

In a true sign of just how much he was respected in Russia, he was invited to carry the Olympic torch for the second stage of the Olympic torch relay. He was passed the torch in Moscow and carried it towards Krasnogorsk. He took great pride in this as it was the closest he would ever get to the Olympics, and he was carrying the torch just fine when it went out.

This has happened before, and the Olympic torch relay always includes multiple copies of the flame, either with the relay or in a backup location. But Shavarsh didn't know this. Never liked the man to panic, though. Shavarsh would run over to the side of the street and asked if anyone had a lighter to relight the torch with. And with the flame relit, he continued on smiling.

As an apology for the embarrassment, the Russians actually asked him to carry back the torch again the next day, where we can confirm that he ran the torch with no problems for the rest of this leg of the trip. What then happened is that he made a famous statement that he was carrying the torch not just for Russia, but for both Russia and Armenia, which he still regularly visits.

He remains the only person in history to carry the Olympic torch twice in the same torch relay. He also wrote a children's book in 2016, so that's something as well. And I'm happy to say right now, at the age of 71, that Sivarsh Karpetian is still kicking, just not in the pool any longer.

And so remember, my friends, when I said a bit ago that we'd get back to medals? Well, the Soviet Union, as you can probably imagine from if you've seen any kind of historical documentaries and you've seen what their generals look like, they are ludicrously famous for the sheer amount of medals they have. They gave out medals for basically everything, and this is a common thing that you would oftentimes see within communist countries and dictatorships, which seek to elevate one's status and present a popular strongman leader image.

They created a medal for just about anything and that has already been proven in this video by the fact that they even had a medal called the medal for salvation of the drowning.

The most important and most famous of all of these was the Hero of the Soviet Union Medal. The equivalent medal in the U.S. would be a combination of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Medal of Honor, as either civilians or military personnel could receive it. The Soviet government awarded it for heroic feats in the service to the Soviet state and society. And it is honestly the position of this channel that the Soviets made a mistake.

Because what they did give Shavarsh Karpetyan was the Order of the Badge of Honor. This was a civilian award that was given out to nearly 2 million people over the years, but the Hero of the Soviet Union Medal, on the other hand, was only ever handed out to 12,780.

and 77 individuals, with 11,747 of those being awarded specifically during World War II. He would not get one. Interestingly enough, the last recipient of the Hero of the Soviet Union Medal was awarded on December 24th, 1991, to Leonid Mikhailovich Solodikov, who was a Soviet diver who led and participated in extreme depth diving experiments.

The guy didn't actually even save any lives, and yet he got this award. Which, don't get me wrong, we're not going to talk down about him, of course, but when you compare that with what Shavarsh did, it's not even close. Armenia also has its own version of the medal now. The National Hero of Armenia medal. And if anyone, and I'm saying this right now, if anyone within the Armenian government is watching this video, and I don't know if that is actually the case, but if they are, it is not too late to right past wrongs.

You could do this, and if anyone who is watching this video right now knows someone within the Armenian government, I don't know why I am saying that, send them this video. It is our position on this channel that Shavarsh Karpentian should immediately be awarded the National Hero of Armenia medal to make up for the medal that the Soviets never gave him.

And you may wonder why. And that is quite simply, my friends, because, say it with me, Shavarsh Karpetian is a hero of the Soviet Union and Armenia. But that, my friends, is the end of our story here today. Honestly, for those of you who stuck around with all this, thank you for listening. It was nice to talk about something wholesome and heartwarming when a lot of my videos tend to be about what's wrong in the world nowadays. And I'm not going to be talking about anything else.

I don't want that to always be the case. I don't want to just explain disasters and how countries completely destroyed and ruined themselves. There are way more things that we can potentially talk about, and this is a nice thing. Please don't forget to like and subscribe and check out our Patreon, where we're doing an entire series on the Vietnam War, that if you want to check that out, that is about to actually reach its last episode.

post so we got a lot of things in there and at some point in the future i might turn that into like a 10 hour documentary that we'll put on here who knows maybe we'll do that that is available right now exclusively on patreon and please make sure to go ahead and check out our merch which i will have linked down in the description below there are many different ways to support this channel and if you want to buy my merch which ironically i'm wearing my shirt right now that says but wait it gets worse

And while that is relevant for some parts of the story, this now was actually a good thing in the end. My friends, I will see you all here next time. Goodbye, and I hope you have a good rest of your day.