Rem Abzalov

Rem Abzalovich Abzalov was born on 28 June 1914 (15 June in the old style) in Tashkent into a working-class family; some sources instead give the village of Srednee Baltaevo, in what is now the Apastovo district of Tatarstan, as his birthplace. He was a Tatar by nationality and received his first schooling at a madrasa.

He later moved to Kazan, worked at a factory, finished a workers’ faculty (rabfak) and in 1936 completed courses at a regional school of the trade-union movement. He was drafted into the Red Army in 1939 and fought in the Winter War of 1939–1940. After demobilisation he became chairman of the factory committee at the Kazan Aviation Plant and entered the workers’ faculty of Kazan State University; he joined the Communist Party in 1941.

Called up again in 1942, he completed political-officer courses and from that year fought in the Second World War in Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Hungary. In 1944 he received the Order of the Red Star twice, on 18 April and on 17 September.

On 1 December 1944 Guards Senior Lieutenant Abzalov, commanding a company of the 116th Guards Rifle Regiment (40th Guards Rifle Division), crossed the Danube near the Hungarian village of Dunapataj, about 10 km west of Paks. In securing the bridgehead his company destroyed about 100 enemy soldiers and officers and took 145 prisoner.

By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 24 March 1945 he was made Hero of the Soviet Union and received the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal (No. 4870). He ended the war as a rifle battalion commander.

He stayed in the army after the war: in 1946 he completed the Vystrel courses, commanded a regiment in the Turkestan Military District, served in 1950–1960 as military commissar of the city of Tashkent and retired with the rank of major.

Abzalov lived in Tashkent for the rest of his life. He died on 7 February 1983 and was buried in the Alley of Heroes of the Tashkent military cemetery, where a gravestone memorial stands. A monument to him also stands in the Alley of Heroes in the Apastovo district of Tatarstan.