Soli Adashev

Soli Adashev was born on 2 March 1923 in the village of Tuda, in what is now the Norin district of the Namangan region, into a peasant family; he was an ethnic Uzbek. In 1941 he graduated from a pedagogical technical school in Andijan and worked as a primary-school teacher.

In 1942 he was called up into the Soviet Army and went to the front the same year. During the Great Patriotic War he served in the 459th Rifle Regiment of the 42nd Rifle Division, 49th Army, 2nd Belorussian Front, commanding a squad with the rank of senior sergeant.

On 23–24 June 1944, in Belorussia, in the Shklov district of the Mogilev region, during the fighting for the village of Chernevka on the Basya river, Adashev's squad broke through the enemy defences and killed about twenty German soldiers. He was the first in his company to cross the Basya, burst into the enemy trenches with grenades and submachine-gun fire and silenced a machine-gun position. He then fought for fourteen hours while surrounded, encouraging his men against tanks and motorised infantry and personally destroying a light machine gun and a sniper, until the squad linked up with the advancing units.

For this action he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on 2 September 1944, and by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 24 March 1945 he was named Hero of the Soviet Union and received the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal.

A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1946, he was demobilised after the war and lived and worked in Namangan. He died on 2 November 1984.