Kyrgyzstan’s last Hero
The caption under the Komsomol Mounument on Molodaya Gvardia in Bishkek reads: "We went to War for Communism"
Today would have been the 90th birthday of Dair Asanovich Asanov if he hadn’t passed away in September 2009. The anniversary has been nominated as one of the thirteen to be officially commemorated this year.
He was born into a farming family in the village of Bash Kaindiy in the At Bashy region of the Naryn oblast. Like most of his contemporaries, he finished secondary school and went to work on a collective farm. Then, in 1941 the Germans launched Operation Barbarosa, ignoring the non-aggression pact that Hitler had signed together with Foreign Minister Molotov, invading the Soviet Union world. The world changed for the 19 year old Asanov and his contemporaries. He left the farm and joined the Red Army.
Training for service in the artillery, he became a gunner in the 1208 Light Artillery Regiment, of the 31st Light Artillery Brigade, in the 11th Artillery Division of the 6th Army which was to serve on the South Western Front; rising to the rank of Sergeant. His unit finished training and was posted to the front in 1943.
In the course of a four hour battle on March 23rd, 1943, the unit faced and turned back three tank advances and he personally destroyed eight German tanks, six armoured cars and accounted for about 40 enemy submachine gunners. In one of these engagements his gun was put out os action by a direct hit from a German shell, but he and his surviving compatriots continued the fight with an automatic machine gun.
In the October of that year, his “exemplary performance”, courage and heroism were recognized byu the Supreme Soviet who awarded him the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and a Gold Dtar, (No. 2645).
After the end of the war, in 1946, he graduated from the Ilyanovskiy Tank school and in 1956 the Lenin Military Academy.
He survived the war but continued his military career: graduating from the Ilyanovskiy Tank school in 1946 and the Lenin Military Academy in 1956; serving as the serving as the Military Commissioner for the Lenin District in Frunze, (now Bishkek); establishing the military academy in Bishkek which now bears his name and eventually retired with the rank of Colonel in 1984.
In 2005 he attended the May 9th, Victory Day, Parade in Red Square in Moscow.
He published a book containing his memoires and, in 2007, a volume on about military theory.
Having been granted the rank of Major General, he had been awarded the Oreder of lewnin, two Orders of the Great Patriotic War, two Orderes of the Red Star. The order of the “Znak pochotna”, (Mark of Honour), as well as other medals including three awarded “for service in battle”.
When he died in Bishkek on 18th September, 2009, he was the last of Kyrgyzstan’s seventy odd Heroes of the Soviet Union of the Second World War, (one source says there 73, but another says 76).
As an aside: It is sometimes difficult for us today to imagine the impact of the war on the people of the Soviet Union. Kyrgyz contingents played a part in defending the motherland and of a total population of just over one and a half million at the time, some 363,000 went to fight, and 160,000 were killed. That’s 45% of those who went to war and 11% of the total population. The population of the Khirghiz SSR was literally decimated.
Bishkek