Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Lizyuk was born in the first year of the twentieth century and lived only 42 years. He died in battle with the rank of major general and forever went down in the history of the Great Patriotic War as a brave hero who was not afraid to give his life for his homeland.
The beginning of the biography
The future general Lizyukov was born in the Belarusian city of Gomel in the family of a rural teacher, who later became the director, Ilya Lizyukov. The family had two more sons: the eldest Eugene, who later became a partisan commander, and the younger Peter, who also rose to the rank of Hero of the Soviet Union. Mom died early, Alexander was only nine years old. Perhaps partly this was the reason for the unambiguous choice of the military field.
Civil War
Having entered the army, the future general Lizyukov continued his studies. He began with the artillery courses of the commanding staff in Moscow. The rifle division of the 12th army of the southwestern front - this was the first appointment that the future general Lizyukov received. The biography of the hero during the Civil War was full of new appointments and victories in battles against General Anton Denikin and Ataman Simon Petlyura.
In 1920, he was appointed the artillery chief of the Kommunar armored train. He participated in the battles in the war with Poland, which ended in 1921. During the war, the train was captured by the Polish army. Then the future general Lizyukov took part in the suppression of the uprising in Tambov. A little later, in the fall of 1921, he was sent to continue military education in Petrograd. In 1923, he graduated from the Higher Armored School.
Military career
After graduating from an armored school, he received a new assignment - to the so-called Trotsky train. In September, he assumed the post of deputy commander of an armored train in the Far East. For several years, the future general Lizyukov served on several more armored trains. A little later, he continued his military education. In the fall of 1924, Alexander Ilyich entered the Mikhail Frunze Academy, which trained senior officers. The study lasted three years, during which he tried himself both as a writer and publicist, and as a poet.
The vast majority of his journalistic work he devoted to military-technical topics. In addition, he took part in the preparation and publication of the magazine Red Dawns. In his poetic works, he mainly expressed revolutionary views and an unequivocal attitude to the overthrown power. From the printed verses you can cite these lines: "Our homeland of the workers / And the fatherland of the peasants / Will not strangle, will not undermine / Neither bourgeois, nor brazen pan!"
Teaching and staffing activities
As soon as Alexander Lizyukov graduated from the higher military academy, he also tried himself in teaching. Over the course of the year, he trained cadets in armored skills in Leningrad. Then he worked for another year there as an assistant in the educational part. Then he was transferred to the Dzerzhinsky Military Academy to teach tactics at the faculty of motorization and mechanization. After that, he was appointed to the propaganda department of the technical headquarters of the armament of the workers 'and peasants' red army, where he was responsible for the editorial publishing house.
Two years later, he received a new appointment to the Moscow Military District, where he was appointed commander of a tank battalion. A year later he was entrusted with a whole tank regiment. However, at this career stage, he not only commanded a regiment, but was fully responsible for its formation. His professional military skills were so impressive that in his incomplete 36 years he was promoted to colonel and appointed commander of the tank brigade named after Sergei Kirov in the Leningrad Military District.
His skills in preparation were highly appreciated, and he was awarded the Order of Lenin.
Abroad and Arrest
In 1935, the future general Lizyukov was awarded particularly high confidence - he was sent to France as a military observer, where the delegation of the USSR studied military maneuvers. However, three years later, during a period of severe repression, the biography of General Lizyukov (who at that time was not yet a general) made a sharp turn - this trip became one of the points of accusation of an anti-Soviet conspiracy. Specialists arrested him in early February 1938. The fabricated case was based on the testimony of one of his colleagues, Innocent of Halepsky. The future general was expelled from the party, dismissed from the Red Army and stripped of his ranks. He was forced to confess. To "knock out" these testimonies, interrogations with bias were repeatedly applied to him.
In addition to the conspiracy, he also admitted his intention to carry out a terrorist attack with the aim of killing People's Commissar Kliment Voroshilov and some other top leaders of the country. According to the Specialists, he planned to run into the Mausoleum on the tank. He spent two years without two months in the NKVD prison, and he spent almost a year and a half of them in solitary confinement. In December 1939, a military tribunal acquitted him. In 1940 he returned to teaching, and in the spring of the 41st he returned to the ranks of the army.
Great Patriotic War and death
I met the war on vacation. After an attack by Hitler’s formations, he was assigned to the Western Front. The first place of hostilities for the general was the city of Borisov in Belarus. In July, he headed the city’s defense headquarters. And already in the first months he was presented with the highest award - the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin. In January 42, he was awarded the rank of Major General. From the very beginning of the war and until his death, he was at the epicenter of the most severe battles and clashes. The general met his death in battles in the Voronezh region: his tank, breaking into the enemy’s location, was hit. The monument to General Lizyukov was erected only in May 2010 at the sites of his last battles in Voronezh.