Trofim Tanaschishin

Trofim Ivanovich Tanaschishin (Russian: Трофим Иванович Танасчишин; 31 January 1903–31 March 1944) was a Red Army lieutenant general killed during World War II.

Tanashchishin joined a Soviet partisan unit during the Russian Civil War and was transferred to the Red Army, with which he fought in the Polish–Soviet War, being captured by Polish troops but released. During the interwar period he held cavalry command positions and in the early 1930s became an officer of the armored forces. When Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began, Tanaschishin commanded a tank regiment encircled in Belarus. He escaped and was decorated for his leadership of a motorcycle regiment during the Battle of Moscow. After commanding a tank brigade on the Southwestern Front in mid-1942, Tanaschishin was appointed commander of the 13th Tank Corps. For his leadership of the corps, which became the 4th Guards Mechanized Corps for its actions in the Battle of Stalingrad, Tanashchishin was again decorated and promoted to major general. He continued to lead the 4th Guards Mechanized in combat until he was mortally wounded in an air raid at the end of March 1944.

World War II

Tanashchishin was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1943 along with other Soviet senior officers; his neck decoration was presented by British Ambassador to the Soviet Union Archibald Clark Kerr to People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov in a 10 May 1944 ceremony.^[1]

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