By Orkhan Yelchuyev exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
The 69th anniversary of the Great Victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany is imminent. All nations of the USSR were fighting together in the war, everyone demonstrated courage and honour. Belarus turned into an arena of dreadful confrontation between the German forces and the Red Army in the first days of the Great Patriotic War.
The heroic fight for Belarus had tremendous military and political value. The German plot of a lightning war was being disrupted and the basis for the Great Victory was being founded in the bloody fights with fascist groups. The leading Wehrmacht units were ground down at the expense of the lives of the Red Army. What no army of Western Europe could do was done by the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, busting the myth about the undefeatable Third Reich. Thousands of German soldiers were destroyed on Belarusian soil.
The years of the war were also a challenge for Azerbaijan, though its territory was far from the zone of active combat. A fifth of the Azerbaijani population was fighting in the war. 681,000 out of the population of 3.4 million people (as of 1941) went to the front lines. Over 10,000 of them were women. 15,000 nurses and corpswomen, 750 communication specialists, 3,000 drivers were trained.
300,000 soldiers from Azerbaijan died in action. 87 battalions, 1123 militia groups, the 77th, 223rd, 396th, 402nd and 416th national infantry divisions were formed. They went using military roads from the foothills of the Caucasus to the Baltic states, Eastern Europe and Berlin.
Over 170,000 soldiers of Azerbaijan were awarded orders and medals for heroism and courage demonstrated in the Great Patriotic War, 123 of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijani soldiers taking part in the defense of the Brest Fortress, in Leningrad, Moscow, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Caucasus, the Battle of Kursk, Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula, the liberation of Baltic states and Eastern Europe, the Battle of Berlin.
Soldiers from Azerbaijan fought in the forests, swamps and soil of Belarus with the same bravery they had shown in the foothills of the Caucasus, protecting the road to the resources of oil-rich Baku. Azerbaijani soldiers were some of the first to repel the attacks of the German forces on the territory of Belarus and around Brest.
The Brest Fortress has been a bastion to fight foreign invaders many times in history, but the damage it sustained and the resistance it put up in June 1941 were unprecedented. The heroism of the defenders of the Brest Fortress has been described with the help of writer Sergey Smirnov’s scrupulous research. We know the names of the defenders of the Brest Garrison from his publications. The protectors of the fortress, realizing that they were surrounded, continued the fight until July 20, 1941. However, the names of 44 Azerbaijanis defending the Brest Fortress have not been well-known among a wide audience. They are missed out in school and university books.
Musician Niyazi Kerimov, who joined the front at the age of 14, mentions Enver Mirza Mansour ogly Mansurov among 70 composers, musicians, conservatory students in his book “Musicians of Azerbaijan Looking in the Eyes of Death.” In 1939, he took part in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939 and was moved to the Brest Garrison in 1941. Enver Mansurov died a heroic death defending the fortress from one of the fascist attacks.
Azerbaijan is searching for the names of defenders of the Brest Fortress. In his research “Azerbaijan in the Years of the Great Patriotic War,” Professor Garash Madatov gives 44 names of Azerbaijani soldiers. The Azerbaijani Soviet Encyclopedia published in 1977 has the same data. New facts about the Azerbaijanis protecting the Brest Fortress were announced a few years ago. The new names included Nasir Iskenderov from Kichik (Karamurat Kedabeg District), a Red Army soldier of the 84th rifle regiment; Sergeant Khalil Gamzaogly Akhverdiyev from Chaldash (Kedabeg District), commander of a platoon of the anti-air company of the 333rd rifle regiment. Akhverdiyev died on June 22, 1941, and was buried on the territory of the fortress.
To be continued
