Nikolay Nikanorovich Belov (; 6 December 1896 – 9 August 1941) was a

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 ...

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 ...

major-general who commanded the 15th Motorized Rifle Division / 15th Rifle Division. Belov was wounded during the

German invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a ...

on 4 August 1941, but chose to remain with his men rather than escape the battle by aircraft. He was killed by a German shell fragment on 9 August 1941.

Biography

Born to a poor working family in

Kursk Kursk (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur (Kursk Oblast), Kur, Tuskar, and Seym (river), Seym rivers. It has a population of Kursk ...

in 1896, Belov was conscripted into the

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

in August 1915 and saw action on the

Eastern Front of World War I The Eastern Front or Eastern Theater, of World War I, was a theater of operations that encompassed at its greatest extent the entire frontier between Russia and Romania on one side and Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany ...

. He joined the newly formed

after the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

, fought in the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

, and became a member of the

Bolshevik Party The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

in 1919. A cavalry commander in the 1930s, he led the 9th Cavalry Division during the Soviet campaign into Polish western Ukraine in 1939 and into Romanian-ceded Bessarabia in 1940. Belov became a major-general in June 1940 and was assigned to command the mechanized 15th Motorized Rifle Division of the 2nd Mechanized Corps in March 1941. Badly mauled in July 1941 by the advancing Germans after their surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Belov's 15th Motorized Rifle Division was reorganized on 6 August as the 15th Rifle Division. Belov was wounded on 4 August 1941. An airplane was dispatched to evacuate him, but Belov chose to remain with his men in the German encirclement.Maslov, Aleksander & David Glantz (Trans., Ed.) (1998).
Fallen Soviet Generals: Soviet General Officers Killed in Battle, 1941–1945.
' pp. 24–25. . He was killed in combat by a German shell fragment near the village of Podvysokoye in the

Kirovograd Oblast Kirovohrad Oblast (), also known as Kirovohradshchyna (), is an administrative divisions of Ukraine, oblast (''province'') in central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kropyvnytskyi. The oblast's population is It is ...

of the

Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...

on 9 August 1941.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Belov, Nikolay Nikanorovich 1896 births 1941 deaths Military personnel from Kursk People from Kursky Uyezd Bolsheviks Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Soviet major generals Russian military personnel of World War I Soviet military personnel of the Russian Civil War People of the Soviet invasion of Poland Soviet military personnel killed in World War II Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner Recipients of the Order of the Red Star