Bronnikov, Mikhail Maksimovich

Mikhail Maksimovich Bronnikov was born on October 14, 1911 in the village of Laptevschina ^{[K 1]} in a peasant family.

In 1918, his father died of the “ Spanish woman ”, and in 1921 Bronnikov was sent to an orphanage organized under the Vyatka sponge.

In 1924 he returned to his native village and joined the Komsomol in the Volost center of Lebyazhye , after which he organized a school of literacy education in the village where he taught, and also sent to other villages of the volost, where he organized new Komsomol cells. Soon he worked as secretary of the Komsomol cell, clerk of the village council, and was also involved in the distribution of loan bonds and insurance.

In 1929, he applied for membership in the party. At the plenum, Bronnikov was elected as chairman of the Lebyazhsky village council.

In 1932 he joined the ranks of the CPSU (b) .

Soon Bronnikov was sent to propaganda courses at the Gorky Komvuz, whose students worked on the construction of a car factory. During the extinguishing of peat, Bronnikov received severe burns, and after treatment he returned to his homeland and became secretary of the Lebyazhsky district committee of the Komsomol.

Military Service

In the fall of 1933, Bronnikov was drafted into the ranks of the Red Army and served as an artillery scout in a horse-drawn battery, then as a tablet computer in the training division.

In 1937 he graduated from the F. Engels Leningrad Military-Political School , upon graduation from which he was sent to the post of political instructor of the battery. Then he headed the party bureau of the regiment, the party commission at the political department of the division, was the head of the division party school.

In May 1941 he graduated in absentia from the Military-Political Academy named after V.I. Lenin.

World War II

Since 1941, he took part in battles on the fronts of World War II. At the beginning of the war, Bronnikov was in the city of Truskavets as a political leader of a separate anti-aircraft battalion, participating in a counterattack near Przemysl and in the battle for Dubno-Lutsk-Brody , where anti-aircraft gunners fired on enemy tanks. Then Bronnikov along with the division retreated to the Dnieper . In September 1941, between Priluki and Piryatin, he was surrounded and had to destroy equipment. Three weeks later, Bronnikov led a group of 96 people out of the circle. Soon Bronnikov was appointed to the post of instructor of the political department in the 1st Guards Rifle Division under the command of Major General Russiyanov . On October 14, he gave the order to the division commander about withdrawing from Akhtyrka to Korocha due to the fact that the enemy was east of the country. About a month the division went out of encirclement.

In July 1942, the 1st Guards Rifle Division began to defend the right bank of the Don .

Bronnikov was awarded the medal “For Courage” during a counterattack near Stalingrad for carrying out the order to distribute leaflets among the encircled enemy in the area of ​​the village of Raspopinskaya.

In the spring of 1943, Bronnikov was appointed to the post of head of the political department of the 67th Guards Rifle Division , commanded by Major General Alexei Ivanovich Baksov . The division took part in repelling the enemy’s advance in the Battle of Kursk , and in the course of the subsequent counterattack reached the region of Akhtyrka and Poltava . From this area, the division of the 6th Guards Army was transferred to the 1st Baltic Front .

During Operation Bagration on June 22, 1944, the 67th Guards Rifle Division broke through the enemy’s defenses and launched an offensive. On June 24, the rifle regiment with reinforcing forces crossed the Zapadnaya Dvina river, where it captured a small bridgehead, but by evening the enemy tanks ousted the fighters of the rifle regiment, and the regiment commander was seriously wounded, after which Bronnikov took over command of the regiment and appointed new commanders instead of those who left when he was in action, he moved the observation post and established contact with the division commander, and also ordered the howitzer brigade to put the guns on direct fire. During the regiment’s command, Bronnikov secured the holding of the bridgehead, and also expanded it by the end of the next day.

By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 22, 1944 for exemplary performance of command missions at the front of the battle against the German invaders and the courage and heroism of the guard shown to Colonel Mikhail Maksimovich Bronnikov, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Golden Star medal ( No. 3838).

After forcing the Western Dvina, Bronnikov took part in the liberation of Belarus and the Baltic states . He finished the war in May 1945, being the head of the political department of the rifle corps near the city of Libava (now Liepaja ).

After the war

With the end of the war, he continued to serve in the Baltic states.

In 1950, he completed retraining courses, and in 1957, the Higher Academic Postgraduate Training Courses for Officers at the V. I. Lenin Military-Political Academy.

He served in Turkestan , then in the Caucasus . Two convocations were elected as a deputy of the Supreme Council of the Tajik SSR .

In 1968 he participated in the course of the Prague Spring .

In 1969, Major General Bronnikov resigned, after which he worked first in the DOSAAF party organization, then in the Knowledge Society at VDNH . For ten years he worked at the Giprobytprom Institute: senior engineer, chief of civil defense, chairman of the institute’s veterans council.

He died on November 14, 1983 in Moscow . He was buried at Kuntsevsky cemetery (plot 10).

• Gold Star Medal ;
• Order of Lenin ;
• Four Orders of the Red Banner ;
• Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree;
• Two orders of the Red Star ;
• Medal "For Courage" ;
• Medals.

• Bronnikov, Mikhail Maksimovich (Russian) . Site " Heroes of the country ".