The Russian Ministry of Defense has launched on its website a multimedia section "Throw into Eternity", dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the feat of the Red Army soldier Alexander Matrosov.
The section presents unique archival documents. The feat of the sailors was made on February 27, 1943. The site contains a scanned copy of the political report of the chief of the rifle brigade, Major Ilyashenko, about the exceptional courage and heroism of 19-year-old Matrosov, who closed the embrasure of the enemy machine-gun bunker. Thanks to this, the Red Army men were able to attack the German stronghold.
The submachine gunner of the 2nd separate rifle battalion of the 91st separate Stalinist rifle brigade of Siberian volunteers received the posthumous title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The section contains a report to the Deputy Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, dated December 1944, which provides a detailed report on the work to establish the exact burial place of Alexander Matrosov, describing the state of the grave and proposed measures to perpetuate his memory.
The site also published unique images of the area of the village of Chernushka, where Matrosov was buried. In 1944, a group of commissioners went there. Among the archival photographs there is a photo of the monument to Alexander Matrosov, located 1 km from the village of Chernushka (now the Pskov region) at the edge of a grove.
In fact, Alexander Matrosov was from Bashkiria, his real name is Shakiryan Mukhamedyanov. Shakiryan was born in 1924 in the small village of Kunakbaevo. When his mother died, he was no more than seven years old. The family was very poor, and after his father married for the third time, the boy left home.
It is difficult to say where Shakiryan went later: the papers of the orphanages of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the beginning of the 30s have not survived. Most likely, he ended up in an orphanage through the NKVD, from where he was sent to Melekess (Dimitrovgrad) of the Ulyanovsk region. There he was already Sashka Matrosov. He called his hometown city: Dnepropetrovsk, which is now called the birthplace of Alexander Matrosov.
Matrosov was in a labor colony in old Ufa. At the end of September 1942, in a group of other recruits, he ended up in the Krasnokholmsk military infantry school near Orenburg. In January 1943, the entire cadet staff of the school was sent by privates to replenish the front-line units.
Promotional video:
Matrosov was enlisted in the lists of the 91st Stalin Pacific Volunteer Naval Brigade on February 25. Two days later, during the capture of the village of Chernushki, he accomplished his immortal feat: he closed the embrasure with an enemy machine gun with his body.
