Tanya Baramzina

Born in the city of Glazov in the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Baramzina graduated from the Glazov State Pedagogical Institute and spent two years teaching a kindergarten class in a village school at Kachkashur. In 1940, she enrolled at University in Perm, and when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, she began to attend nursing courses in the evening, while training to become a sharpshooter.

In June 1943 she was sent to the Central Women’s Sniper Training School outside Moscow and, upon graduation in April 1944, she was sent to the 3rd Belorussian Front. Within her first three months, she had killed at least 16 enemy soldiers, while serving in the 3rd Battalion of the 252nd Rifle Regiment (70th Rifle Division, 33rd Army).

On July 5, 1944 Baramzina's battalion parachuted behind enemy lines as part of a larger attempt to seize the crossroads near the village of Pekalin in Smalyavichy, hoping to block the retreat of German forces. An engagement broke out before they reached the crossroads, and the battalion took heavy casualties. After killing 20 German soldiers, Baramzina was reassigned to care for the wounded personnel, due to her medical training.

The trench that was being used to hold the Soviet wounded was re-taken by German forces, and after being wounded by artillery fire, she was captured and subjected to torture in an attempt to have her divulge information. After her eyes had been gouged out, Baramzina was subsequently shot point-blank with an anti-tank rifle.

In addition to a monument in the local Glazov park, Proletarskaya Street, on which she had grown up, was renamed in her honour, as well as streets in Minsk and Izhevsk and outside the Podolsk Central Women's Sniper Training School. The Young Pioneers group at the school in which she had been teaching was also renamed in her memory. A diorama at the Belarusian Great Patriotic War Museum depicts her last stand.