Akhat Abdulkhakovich Akhmetyanov (, ; 10 August 1918 — 3 August 1976) was one of the top snipers in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Prewar

Akhmetyanov was born on 10 August 1918 to a Bashkir family in Makarovo. He completed seven grades of school and then graduated from the Sermenevsky Pedagogical School in 1936 before working at a math teacher. He began to study at the Odessa Institute of Chemical Technology before entering the Red Army in 1938. He fought in the

Winter War The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peac ...

before being demobilized, but he was redrafted into the army a week before the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

World War II

In the early days of the war he was in a training battalion in Khlebnikovo. He first saw battle in July near Moscow, as part of the 166th Special Rifle Battalion. He was shell shocked on 5 August 1941 and was sent to

Boksitogorsk Boksitogorsk () is a town and the administrative center of Boksitogorsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the banks of the Pyardomlya River in the basin of the Syas River, east of St. Petersburg. Population: History Th ...

before being moved to the 549th Special Rifle Battalion. He was wounded for the first time in January 1942 and moved to the Leningrad Front in August 1942 as part of the 260th Rifle Regiment. There he trained 25 new snipers and personally killed 83 enemy soldiers, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Star on 11 November. On 26 September 1943 he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd class for killing 359 Nazis and training 106 new snipers. He was visited by Ilya Ehrenburg who praised his sniper skills, and on 15 January 1944 he was awarded the Excellent Sniper badge. He was discharged from the military as an invalid after being badly wounded in the stomach in February 1944. His exact tally varies between sources. There is no final award sheet specifying a breakdown of his kills, but a quote from him in the newspaper ''Na Strazhe Rodiny'' on 31 December 1943 claimed a tally of 502 kills, and in his postwar autobiography he said he killed 567 fascists, although it was not specified how many were sniper kills and how many of them were from other means such as grenades and machine gun fire.

Civilian life

After being discharged from the military he returned to working as a schoolteacher in his home village, becoming the director of the school and the head of the local department of education. He worked as the director of three other schools before he died on 3 August 1976. A Veterans Council petitioned the government for him to be awarded the title

Hero of the Soviet Union The title Hero of the Soviet Union () was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society. The title was awarded both ...

, but it was not awarded for unknown reasons. There is a memorial plaque on the home where he lived.

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Akhmetyanov, Akhat 1918 births 1976 deaths Soviet military snipers Soviet military personnel of World War II Recipients of the Order of the Red Star Bashkir people