Nikolay Arkhipovich Babayev

Nikolay Arkhipovich Babayev was born on 28 February 1924 in the village of Ust-Sumy in Kargat district of Novo-Nikolayevsk province, now Kargatsky district of Novosibirsk region, into a peasant family. He finished seven years of school, worked on a collective farm, then moved to Novosibirsk and worked at mechanical plant no. 386. He was conscripted into the Workers and Peasants Red Army in January 1942 by the Dzerzhinsky district military commissariat of Novosibirsk, trained for six months in a reserve unit and reached the front in August 1942. For the fighting of 1942-44 he received the Order of the Red Star and the Order of Glory 3rd Class. By the start of 1945 he commanded an armoured personnel carrier in the headquarters company of the 53rd Guards Tank Brigade (6th Guards Tank Corps, 3rd Guards Tank Army, 1st Ukrainian Front). His Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred for his part in the Lower and Upper Silesian offensives of February and March 1945, and those actions are recorded as specific episodes rather than as a formula. In February 1945 two carriers, one of them under Babayev's command, broke into the town of Madlau, scattered its garrison and killed more than twenty enemy soldiers and officers. Leaving the town, they intercepted a supply column on a road, destroying vehicles and carts and inflicting losses on its escort. On the same raid the crews damaged the railway line and halted a German train: while his comrades set it alight, Babayev fired on the soldiers leaving the carriages. On the next raid, near the village of Rotwasser, he killed about thirty enemy soldiers and took an officer prisoner. Near the town of Naumburg his group captured two liaison officers, who disclosed that an SS formation headquarters was in the town. Entering Naumburg unseen, Babayev and his men killed two sentries, broke into the headquarters, seized documents and several officers, shook off the pursuit and delivered the prisoners and papers to brigade headquarters. The sources connect those documents with the subsequent success of Soviet armoured formations. On 7 March 1945 his party took a commanding height by assault and held it until Soviet units came up, beating off a counter-attack by superior forces; in that action Babayev destroyed two German tanks. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 27 June 1945, Guards Senior Sergeant Nikolay Arkhipovich Babayev was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star no. 8032. For the Berlin offensive he received the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd Class on 18 May 1945. He was demobilised in 1946 and lived in the settlement of Pashino, part of Novosibirsk since 1997. He joined the Communist Party in 1947, completed party school and worked at the Iskra mechanical plant in Novosibirsk. He died on 13 August 1984 and is buried at the Northern (Pashino) cemetery in Novosibirsk. A bust stands on the avenue of glory in the central park of Kargat, a street in Novosibirsk carries his name, and a memorial plaque marks the house in Pashino where he lived.