Museib Bagir oglu Bagirov

Museib Bagir oglu Bagirov was born on 30 June 1915 in Yelizavetpol in Yelizavetpol province, now Ganja in Azerbaijan. He finished secondary school in 1931, left for Baku and graduated from the maritime technical college there in 1933, then returned to his home town and worked as an assistant foreman at the Kirovabad textile mill. He was in the Red Army from 1941 and at the front from 1942. In 1943 he completed an accelerated course at the Kemerovo military infantry school and returned to the front. With the 206th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 69th Guards Rifle Division he fought at Kursk and in the liberation of left-bank Ukraine. The episode the sources describe in detail belongs to 9 September 1943. South-west of the town of Zenkov in Poltava region a party of eleven guardsmen under his command took an important height by assault. In that action Bagirov, armed with a sniper rifle, killed 28 enemy soldiers and knocked out an artillery piece and its crew with an anti-tank grenade. The party held the height for more than a day while surrounded, destroying three tanks and up to 250 soldiers and officers. Bagirov was concussed but did not leave the position. The decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 22 February 1944 that made him a Hero of the Soviet Union, with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star, states a different basis: exemplary performance of combat tasks in the crossing of the Dnieper, the development of success on the river's right bank, and the courage and heroism shown in doing so. The closely described fight for the height near Zenkov and the wording of the decree therefore refer to different events. Both are given here as they stand, and neither is presented as the other. He joined the Communist Party in 1944. After hospital he returned to his regiment and went west with it. At the very end of the war he was severely wounded in both arms and in the head; he spent 9 May 1945 in hospital, where he lay for nearly eight months. He was discharged to the reserve in October 1945 with the rank of captain. He returned to Azerbaijan and lived and worked in Baku, graduating from a commercial college in 1946. For several years he headed geological survey work in the Neftechalaneft oil administration; while dealing with a breakdown he fell from a twenty-five-metre derrick and survived, but doctors forbade him physical work. He then worked in the workers' supply department of the Karadagneft administration, and later managed a department store in the settlement of Lok-Batan and the Gastronom shop in Baku. He died on 17 May 1981.