Sergey Ignatyevich Bufetov

Sergey Ignatyevich Bufetov was born in 1915 in the village of Konduki in Yepifan uyezd of Tula governorate, now in Uzlovaya district of Tula region, into a peasant family. He finished seven classes of school in 1929 and worked on a collective farm, then moved to Moscow and worked as a lathe operator at a factory. He was called up into the Red Army in 1935 and in 1938 completed a course for junior lieutenants. He took part in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939–40. From June 1941 he was in the field army, serving on the North-Western, Northern and Leningrad Fronts, and was concussed and wounded. He joined the Communist Party in 1942. Before the action for which he received the title he had been awarded the Order of the Red Star (1942), the Order of the Red Banner (1943) and the Order of the Patriotic War 1st class (1944), and the medal For the Defence of Leningrad. In June 1944 Captain Bufetov commanded the 3rd Battalion of the 96th Artillery Regiment, 90th Rifle Division, 21st Army, Leningrad Front, in the Vyborg offensive on the Karelian Isthmus. According to his award citation, he spent two days observing the enemy positions from about 100 metres before the attack. On 10 June, near Aleksandrovka, his battalion's fire destroyed a pillbox, observation posts and machine-gun points. On 15 June, at the Raivolan-joki river near the village of Vankasakha, he crossed with his scouts among the first, organised an all-round defence of a small bridgehead on the western bank with scouts, signallers and infantrymen, and held it until 21:00, directing his battalion's fire against counter-attacks; he also took over a rifle battalion whose commander had fallen. He died of wounds in June 1944. The date is not settled: the OBD Memorial burial record and warheroes.ru give 14 June, while ru.wikipedia and the list of Heroes give 22 June, which is also the date on which his regimental commander signed the nomination. He was first buried near Tyuriseva station and later reburied in a mass grave in Zelenogorsk, now part of St Petersburg. The title Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred posthumously by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 18 November 1944, with the Order of Lenin; the text on warheroes.ru gives the decree as 8 November 1944. His name is on the monument to Tula Heroes of the Soviet Union in Tula, and a bust stands at the memorial in Zelenogorsk (2023).