Born in 1919 in the village of Lukino, Velikie Luki region. First he graduated from seven classes of the Belsk secondary school, then the city pedagogical college. He read a lot and gradually collected a good library of fiction at home. On several self-made shelves, one could find poetry and prose, as well as various dictionaries and reference books. He loved to draw, compose poetry, compose and solve crosswords, rebuses. He was very fond of messing with children, easily found a common language with them. I dreamed of becoming a teacher. After graduating from the technical school, having passed all the exams, he was admitted to study at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute named after N.K. Krupskaya at the Faculty of History. He studied successfully, was enthusiastically engaged in scientific work. I learned about the short and tragic fate of my uncle Ivan Semyonovich Butsev during the dashing war years from my father Fyodor Semyonovich and his younger brother Pyotr Semyonovich. My grandfather Semyon Konstantinovich, a participant in the battles of the First World War, and then the Civil War, throughout his long life carefully kept documentary evidence of that heroic time - the war letters of his four beloved sons Ivan, Fyodor, Nikolai and Peter. Two sons Ivan and Nikolay remained young forever ... Only 12 letters and postcards from Ivan to his father have survived. In 1941, these are three letters: June 30, October 5 and 10. The rest of the letters refer to 1942: June 16 and 26; July 4, 18, 23 and 29; August 3, 15 and 19. From these letters, bit by bit, information about my uncle Ivan Semenovich Butsev began to be collected. It turned out that on June 26, 1941, he passed the last exam of the summer session for the third year at "good" and was sent to work as a sportsman in the pioneer camp No. 3 near Moscow in the area of ​​the railway station Pravda Severnaya ZhD. At the end of the summer (or autumn) of 1941, he was drafted into the Red Army by the Frunzensky district military registration and enlistment office in Moscow and sent to a military unit in the city of Arzamas, and in October, along with other former students, to study at a military infantry school in Vladimir. Already on May 2, 1942, an accelerated graduation of young officers took place. I.S. Butsev was assigned to the Western Front in the 12th Guards Rifle Division. Guard Lieutenant I.S. Butsev was appointed commander of the 2nd mortar company in the 29th Guards Rifle Regiment. Location in the area of ​​the city of Kozelsk, Kaluga region. On the front line since June 30, 1942. In a letter to his father dated July 4, he writes: "A few meters away is the enemy's front line." In a letter dated August 15: “Good afternoon, dear dad and Cockerel! I send you my heartfelt greetings! I received your letter, but I was a little late in answering it. For three days now we have been fighting the Germans. Yesterday we fought off four counterattacks. The enemy suffered heavy losses in men and equipment. The prisoners were taken. We firmly hold our borders. This morning there has been a lull, which I took advantage of to write to you. Yesterday I was slightly wounded by mine fragments in my arms, leg and neck. All the fragments, except one, were immediately removed by the medical instructor. One has not yet been removed, it sits deep in the neck, quite small. I repeat, the wound was completely insignificant, I didn’t even go to the first-aid post, I was helped on the spot. In general, everything is in order. "