Nikolai Basistiy

Nikolai Efremovich Basistiy ( – 20 October 1971) was an officer of the Soviet Navy. He rose to the rank of admiral and was commander of the Black Sea Fleet, in a career that spanned the First and Second World Wars, and the Russian Civil War.

Born into a peasant family, Basistiy served as a mine specialist during the First World War, being decorated for his service in the Black Sea Fleet. Continuing his naval career after the Russian Revolution, Basistiy became a supporter of the Bolsheviks, and served in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Fleet during the Russian Civil War. He saw action against the White movement and other anti-Bolshevik risings in Odessa and Astrakhan, and as part of the and Caspian Flotillas. With the Bolshevik victory in the civil war, Basistiy undertook various studies and specialised in mine warfare. He was sent to serve as an advisor to the Spanish Republican Navy during the Spanish Civil War, and was decorated for his service.

He served with distinction in the Black Sea during the Second World War, at first as commander of a cruiser, and then rising to the post of chief of staff, and for a time acting fleet commander. He saw action at many of the defensive operations during the sieges of Soviet Black Sea ports, and at the landing operations to force enemy invaders back. Shortly after the war he became commander in chief of the Black Sea Fleet. Towards the end of his career he was a deputy to Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and an advisor to the Group of Inspectors General of the Ministry of Defence, before his retirement in 1960. He wrote his memoirs, which were published shortly before his death in 1971.

Early career Basistiy was born to a peasant family on in the village of , Yelisavetgradsky Uyezd, in the Kherson Governorate, which was at that time part of the Russian Empire. He entered the military with the outbreak of the First World War, graduating from the junker school in Sevastopol in 1915, and in 1916 entered the Black Sea Fleet's mine school. After time aboard the training ship Rion, he served in the fleet as a non-commissioned mine officer second class aboard the destroyers Zharky and Sulin. He was awarded the George Medal and promoted to mine officer first class in autumn 1916.

Basistiy continued in naval service during the Russian Revolution, being elected to the Zharkys ship committee in February 1917 and serving in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Fleet from 1918 onwards. During this time he assisted in the Kerch-Feodosiya landing operation in December 1941-January 1942. His wife, Tamara Iosifovna, had predeceased him in 1960 and they were buried side by side. In 2011 their daughter, Elena Nikolaevna, was interred in the same plot. The Soviet Navy planned to honour Basistiy by naming an Udaloy II-class destroyer Admiral Basistiy. She was laid down in 1991, but the dissolution of the Soviet Union later that year interrupted her building, and she was scrapped on the slipway in 1994.