This summer service dress shirt belonged to Vasily Nikolayevich Veresovoy, the commissar of the Shch-401 submarine. He was born into the family of a peasant in the village of Naumovskaya (Podporozhye), Onega Uyezd, Arkhangelsk Governorate, on January 13, 1913.

From an early age, Vasily Veresovoy experienced physical labor firsthand. At the age of 15, he started working at the Podporozhye lumber camp and joined the Komsomol there. After that, he enrolled in the factory apprenticeship school at Ponga sawmill No. 34. Later, he studied at the Arkhangelsk Soviet Party School.

After graduation, Vasily Veresovoy began working as an instructor at the Onega District Komsomol Committee and as a propagandist. He was elected secretary of the Komsomol Committee at sawmill No. 34. In 1936, he was drafted into the navy. He studied in a training unit as a radio operator and served on submarines.

The young sailor, full of energy and enthusiasm as a political agitator, was sent by the fleet command to the Military Political School in 1938. After graduation, Vasily Veresovoy became an assistant to the head of the Northern Fleet’s political department and was responsible for the Komsomol. During the Winter War, he served on a torpedo boat destroyer.

When the Great Patriotic War broke out, Vasily Veresovoy submitted a request to be transferred to a warship. This is how he began his service as a commissar on the Shch-401 submarine of the Northern Fleet. This submarine, also known as the “Pike”, put out to sea many times and successfully attacked enemy ships.

In March 1942, Vasily Veresovoy received the Order of the Red Banner for his contribution to the sinking of two enemy ships. In April 1942, the Shch-401 submarine went to sea once again. On April 25, the captain of the “Pike” radioed the headquarters to report the completion of the mission. The crew was permitted to return to port, but the submarine did not make it home. The entire crew, including Commissar Veresovoy, perished at sea. After the war, one of the ships of the Northern Fleet was named in his honor. In Onega, a street was also named after Vasily Veresovoy.