Amayak Grigoryevich Babayan

Amayak Grigoryevich Babayan was born on 15 August 1901 in the village of Zyrchi in the Kagyzman district of the Kars region of the Russian Empire - by other accounts in the town of Kars itself - into a large working family. He was Armenian. His parents were killed during the Armenian genocide, and he and his brother fled from the Kars area into Armenia. In May 1918 he volunteered for the army of the Republic of Armenia and fought in the Armenian-Turkish war of that year, including the battle of Sardarapat. In May 1920 he deserted from the Armenian army. When Soviet power was established in Armenia in November 1920 he volunteered for the Red Army, serving in Voronovich's special detachment and then in the 4th Lori Armenian Rifle Regiment of the 20th Rifle Division, 11th Army. He fought in the civil war in Transcaucasia, including the suppression of the Dashnak uprising of February and March 1921. Twenty years of service followed: divisional training school in 1923, the command course at the Myasnikyan joint military school in Yerevan with distinction in 1924, and the Kamenev higher joint school for Red Army commanders in Kyiv in 1928. He served in the 76th Armenian Mountain Rifle Division as a platoon and company commander, head of supply and head of the junior commanders' school, and was commissioned captain in 1936. From June 1938 he was in the 100th Rifle Division of the Belorussian Military District, and from August 1939 commanded the 383rd Rifle Regiment of the 121st Rifle Division. He took part in the Red Army's entry into western Belorussia in September 1939. He was at the front from the first day of the war. In the Bialystok-Minsk battle his division held the line of the river Shchara and fell back fighting through Baranovichi and Starye Dorogi; by 7 July Major Babayan had brought part of the division out of encirclement near Novozybkov. In October 1941, by then a lieutenant colonel commanding the headquarters guard regiment of the Bryansk Front, he was encircled a second time in the Bryansk pocket and fought his way out. The episode on which his reputation rests is the Yelets offensive of December 1941. Commanding the 654th Rifle Regiment of the 148th Rifle Division, Babayan fought in the streets of Yelets. His regiment broke into the factory district; the assault group he led was cut off, and he returned fire with a PPD-40 sub-machine gun, killing, as the sources record, 23 enemy soldiers. Freed by a counter-attack by the rest of the regiment, he fought on, and that same night the regiment took the factory district and the settlement of Pervye Lavy. He was severely wounded in mid-December; the sources disagree, giving either 13 December near the town of Livny or 11 or 12 December near the village of Afanasyevo in Yelets district. He received the Order of the Red Banner for this fighting in early 1942. From April 1942 he commanded the 390th Armenian Rifle Division on the Crimean Front. The division was all but destroyed in the Kerch defensive operation and was disbanded; Babayan himself was severely wounded on 13 May 1942 near the village of Mikhailovka outside Kerch and evacuated across the Kerch strait. From April 1943 he commanded the 76th Rifle Division, which distinguished itself on 30 August 1943 in the liberation of Yelnya and was given the honorific "Yelninskaya". On 15 September 1943 Babayan was wounded for the third time and was in hospital in Yaroslavl until January 1944. From 29 March 1944 he commanded the 338th Rifle Division of the 5th Army. In the Belorussian operation the division crossed the Vilia three times and the Neman twice under fire, earned the honorific "Nemanskaya", and its commander was promoted major general on 15 July 1944. In October 1944 the division attacked in the Memel operation and reached the border of East Prussia. On 25 October 1944 Babayan was removed from command of the division and placed at the disposal of the front's military council; no reason is given in the available sources, and none is supposed here. On 19 February 1945 he was appointed to command the 35th Mechanised Brigade of the 1st Mechanised Corps, 2nd Guards Tank Army. In the East Pomeranian operation the brigade took part in the liberation of Poland. In the Berlin operation it advanced from the Oder towards Berlin covering the corps' right flank: on 20 April 1945 it took the town of Bernau, and on 21 April it entered the Berlin suburb of Weissensee. Between 16 and 21 April the brigade destroyed 14 tanks, 22 guns and up to 350 enemy soldiers and officers, and captured 11 tanks, 22 guns, 49 vehicles and 42 prisoners. On 21 April 1945 Major General Babayan was killed in the fighting for Lindenberg on the north-western edge of Berlin, two and a half weeks before the end of the war. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 31 May 1945 he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. He was buried on the town square of Soldin, now Myslibórz in West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland. In 1947 his remains were reinterred in the military cemetery on the northern edge of the town. Streets in Myslibórz, Yerevan and the settlement of Solidarnost in Yelets district carry his name, and a memorial plaque stands in Yerevan.