Uzeir Abduramanov

Uzeir Abduramanov was born on 25 March 1916 (12 March, Old Style) in Crimea, in the village of Kashik-Degirmen in the Simferopol district (now Novoandreevka), into a Crimean Tatar family. Some sources give the neighbouring village of Dzhaga-Mamysh (now Sukhorechye) as his birthplace.

In 1933 he finished a factory training school and worked as a cook, then as deputy chairman of a transport and cart artel in Simferopol. He was called up into the Red Army in 1939 and served in the engineer troops; he was at the front from 1941 and took part in the Battle of Stalingrad.

In September 1943, near the village of Novye Tereshkovichi in the Gomel district of the Belarusian SSR, the sapper squad of Senior Sergeant Abduramanov built a crossing over the Sozh River; when the task was done, only three of the 17 men were still alive. Earlier he had distinguished himself building a crossing over the Desna. By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 15 January 1944 he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, and on the same day he received the Order of Lenin.

On 18 May 1944 the Crimean Tatars were deported, and Abduramanov’s family was among them. After the war he followed them to the Uzbek SSR. In 1948 he was offered the chance to return to Crimea, but only his closest relatives could go with him, and he stayed in Uzbekistan.

From the late 1950s he took part in the Crimean Tatar national movement, travelled to Moscow as a representative, and was repeatedly summoned to the KGB because of gatherings at his home. From 1962 he lived in Navoi and worked at a uranium enterprise. In 1985 he received the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class.

Uzeir Abduramanov died in Navoi on 19 January 1991. On 13 April 2015 a monument to him was unveiled in the Crimean village of Dzhaga-Mamysh.