Seyitnafe Seyitveliyev

Seyitveliyev was born on 29 May 1919 in the village of Tav-Kipchak (located within Belogorsky district, Crimea) to a Crimean Tatar family. After completing secondary school he worked at a collectivized grape farm until he was drafted into the Red Army in 1939 and assigned to the Odessa military district.[1]

After being drafted into the Red Army Seyitveliyev graduated from the junior commander's school and entered combat immediately upon the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Throughout the beginning of the war he participated in the Kerch landing, as well as in the battles for Sevastapol, Odessa, Stalingrad, Kursk, Bryansk, Gomel, Poland, Prussia, and the Baltics.[2]

He was wounded in December 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad and hospitalized for two months. Seyitveliyev began to distinguish himself 25 June 1944 in the fighting for the Gomel region of occupied Belarus. In the process of breaking through enemy defenses and repulsing counterattacks, he suppressed multiple enemy firing point as well as two tanks, all under heavy enemy fire. When his regiment was deployed to the Minsk region to attack a column of containing 40 enemy tanks, Seyitveliyev managed to hit a total of 15 enemy tanks during the week-long battle. For his actions in Belarus he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and nominated for the title Hero of the Soviet Union. By coincidence the nomination sheet, which had been submitted just shortly after the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in May 1944, listed his nationality as Tatar instead of Crimean Tatar, despite nobody in his regiment knowing of the deportation at the time. On 25 September 1944 he was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union by decree of the Supreme Soviet, which Seyitveliyev learned of while fighting for the town of Ostroleka in Poland. He continued to fight across Eastern Europe, reaching East Prussia in the winter of 1945, after which he reached the coast of the Baltic Sea and was demobilized in 1946.[2]

After being demobilized in 1946 he was deported to Central Asia despite his reputation as a war hero solely on the grounds that he was a Crimean Tatar. He worked in agriculture, at a glass factory, and as a teacher before he passed away in the Tajik city of Leninabad on 13 March 1983 before the Crimean Tatar people received the full right to return in 1989.[3][4] While in exile he participated in the Crimean Tatar civil rights movement.[5]

• Hero of the Soviet Union (25 September 1944)
• Order of Lenin (25 September 1944)
• Order of the Red Banner (28 August 1944)
• Order of the Patriotic War 1st class (23 July 1945)
• Medal "For Courage" (26 December 1943)
• Medal "For Battle Merit" (27 August 1943)
• Honorary citizen of Minsk