Mariia Semenovna Polivanova

Polivanova, Mariia Semenovna 

Born Oct. 24, 1922, in the villege of Naryshkino, now in Aleksin Raion, Tula Oblast; died Aug. 14, 1942, near the village of Sutoki-Biakovo, now in Staraia Russa Raion, Novgorod Oblast. Participant in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), sniper. Hero of the Soviet Union (Feb. 14, 1943, posthumously). Member of the Komsomol from 1938. Candidate member of the CPSU from 1942. Daughter of a worker.

Polivanova joined the Moscow people’s volunteer corps in October 1941. In 1942 she became a private in the 528th Rifle Regiment of the 130th Rifle Division of the First Shock Army. In the course of a battle, Polivanova and Natal’ia Kovshova blew themselves up with grenades, thereby killing the Hitlerites that had outnumbered and surrounded them. She was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

REFERENCE

Glukhovskii, S. “Vsegda vdvoem.” In the collection Geroini: Ocherki o zhenshchinakh—Geroiakh Sovetskogo Soiuza, issue 1. [Moscow, 1969.]