Four words on a turret. One brother who didn’t come home.

"Месть за брата героя."

Revenge for the Hero Brother.

Those words were hand-painted in white across the turret of a Soviet IS-2. Behind them were two brothers from the Ryazan region who went to tank school together in 1941.

The younger brother, Nikolay Krasikov, became a Guards Lieutenant and tank commander in the 48th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment. In the autumn of 1943, during the fight for the Dnieper bridgehead and the drive on Kyiv, his award citation credits his crew with knocking out a tank and two guns at Lyutezh, four more guns at Novye Petrovtsy, and three at Vyshhorod. In one action he broke out of an encirclement while recovering a disabled tank and evacuating its wounded company commander.

On November 11, 1943, at Vinnitskie Stavy, Nikolay was killed. He was nineteen. In April 1944 he was posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union.

His older brother Mikhail kept fighting. Later in the war he commanded an IS-2 with his brother’s memory painted on the turret. A wartime photograph, published as the 1st Belorussian Front in February 1945, shows the tank, the inscription, and a tanker in the hatch. Regional histories say Mikhail fought west through Ukraine and Poland toward Pomerania. He didn’t live to see the victory.

Nikolay never served in an IS-2. The tank was only adopted on October 31, 1943, eleven days before he was killed. It was his brother who took it to war.

THE TANK

The IS-2 was the Red Army’s breakthrough heavy tank: around 46 tonnes, a four-man crew, and the massive 122mm D-25T gun firing a shell of roughly 25 kilograms. That shell was built to destroy fortifications, antitank guns, and buildings, and it could wreck a Panther or a Tiger with a single hit. The trade-off was a slow loading cycle: separate shell and propellant, and only 28 rounds carried.

The Model 1944 is the mature version. Its straightened front hull eliminated the vulnerable driver’s hatch of early production, giving the tank a cleaner, stronger glacis. IS-2s were concentrated in Guards heavy tank regiments and sent where the line had to be broken: Korsun, the Sandomierz bridgehead, the Vistula, Pomerania, Berlin. About 3,400 were built.

WHAT HISTORY DOESN’T TELL US

The tank’s serial number and final fate have never been traced. Accounts differ on exactly when and where Mikhail died. Nikolay’s story is documented in his wartime award citation. Mikhail’s lives on in a single photograph. That’s enough.

What you’re building:

• 1,485 pieces in 1:25 scale
• The IS-2 Model 1944 silhouette: straightened front hull, cast turret, and the long 122mm D-25T with its double-baffle muzzle brake
• Working suspension
• Full interior detail
• Opening hatches
• Elevating main gun
• Rotating turret
• 100% pad-printed markings, zero stickers, including the turret inscription
• No figures included