Vladimir Buzinayevich Borsoyev

Vladimir Buzinayevich Borsoyev was born on 13 April 1906 in the ulus of Kholbot in Irkutsk province, into the family of a Buryat cattle-herder. Orphaned at six, he worked as a hired labourer for better-off peasants. His younger brother, Ilya Buzinayevich Borsoyev, became a party and state figure of the Buryat-Mongol ASSR, chairman of the presidium of its Supreme Soviet in 1940-41 and chairman of its Supreme Soviet of the first convocation from 1941 to 1946. After school Borsoyev was elected chairman of the agricultural commune of the village of Tukhum in Bayandai district, completed the Soviet party school and worked as an instructor of the Ekhirit-Bulagat district party committee. In 1932 a special party intake sent him to the Leningrad artillery school, and in 1941 he graduated from the Frunze academy. He was at the front from June 1941. His war ran through the Voronezh and 1st Ukrainian Fronts, the Kursk salient, the fighting for right-bank Ukraine and the Carpathian foothills, the seizure of the Sandomierz bridgehead on the left bank of the Vistula, the liberation of Kraków and other Polish towns, the crossing of the Oder and the storming of Ratibor. He was wounded three times. He commanded the 7th Guards Anti-Tank Artillery Brigade — a formation whose task was to stop tanks by firing at them over open sights. On 8 March 1945, in the fighting on the Oder bridgehead, Guards Colonel Borsoyev was severely wounded and died of his wounds. He is buried in Lviv on the Hill of Glory. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 6 May 1965, posthumously, twenty years after his death. His second Order of Lenin carries the same date. He was also awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1943, the Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class, the Order of the Red Star in 1941, the Medal for Battle Merit in 1944, and the American Legion of Merit in the officer degree.