Morkovin, Mikhail Vasilievich

Mikhail Vasilievich Morkovin was born on December 14, 1920 in the village of Ishcheino (now the Krasninsky district of the Lipetsk region ). Russian From a peasant family.

After graduating from a rural school from September 1936 to July 1939 he studied at the pedagogical school of the city of Lebedyan, Lipetsk region. From August 1939 to November 1939 he worked as a teacher in an elementary school in the village of Vygladovka, Krasnensky District, Lipetsk Region . Drafted into the Red Army in December 1939. In April 1941 he graduated from the Chernigov Military Engineering School .

The commander of the sapper platoon, Lieutenant Mikhail Morkovin, entered the battle with the Nazi invaders in the early days of World War II near Minsk in the ranks of the 44th Rifle Corps of the Western Front .

World War II

June 22, 1941 , at dawn, Mikhail Morkovin, being with his platoon in a field camp, experienced the horror of losses from the first enemy bombardment. And already on June 24, Morkovin’s sappers were fighting with advancing enemy tanks and infantry, setting up land mines at the front lines, mining roads and bridges. For more than two weeks, several surviving Red Army sappers under the command of Lieutenant Morkovin left the encirclement, continuing to bravely undermine the Nazis along the roads.

On the 20th of July 1941, the Carrot group left the encirclement in the location of their corps. At this time, the battle of Smolensk was already underway. On July 24, Lieutenant Morkovin was tasked with blowing up a large girder bridge over the Dnieper River in the defense section entrusted to him near Smolensk . However, the presence of a large amount of TNT in the absence of the necessary fuses made the task almost impossible without self-sacrifice. Mikhail Morkovin, with his sapper fighter, risking their lives with the help of hand grenades and a gas canister blew up the bridge and only miraculously did not die themselves. On July 28, 1941, while ensuring the crossing of our withdrawing troops across the Dnieper in the Solovyovo region, Lieutenant Morkovin was wounded.

After being cured at the hospital, Mikhail Morkovin was appointed company commander of the 615th separate combat engineer battalion of the 335th rifle division. He participated in the winter campaign on the South-Western Front , in the offensive operation of the Red Army in the vicinity of the city of Shakhty, Rostov Region . April 17, 1942 was heavily shell-shocked. In June 1942, Senior Lieutenant Morkovin became deputy commander of the 615th Special Operations Regiment of the 335th SD, which with battles retreated to the foothills of the Caucasus . Autumn - winter of 1942 was a turning point in the battle for the Caucasus . Mikhail Morkovin showed resourcefulness and courage in the battles for the city of Malgobek and Alkhanchurt valley . Kleist’s tank columns tried to break through this valley to Grozny , to our oil resources. Soviet sappers blocked the way for the Nazi tanks, having built special bridges on the Alkhanchurt canal under hurricane fire, which delayed burning oil lowered through the water, making the valley an insurmountable obstacle for the enemy.

After the battle for the Caucasus, Captain Morkovin, being the deputy commander of the 616th Special Operations Regiment of the 337th SD as part of the Steppe and Voronezh Fronts , participated in the preparation of strategic defense in the Kursk region, in the Battle of Kursk itself and, further, in the liberation of left-bank Ukraine . Extensive combat experience and command skills allowed Mikhail Morkovin to become a master of engineering on the battlefield.

In September 1943, Major Morkovin, being the commander of the 616th Special Operations Command, received a battle order from the commander of the 337th regiment to provide the regiments of the division with a crossing across the Dnieper in the vicinity of the village of Zarubentsy, Kanevsky District, Cherkasy Region . On the night of September 22, the sappers of the battalion, without waiting for the transportation of engineering equipment, using improvised watercraft (two old longboats, three fishing flat-bottomed boats and rafts assembled from improvised materials) under heavy enemy machine-gun and artillery fire, began crossing ferrymen of the division to the Bukrinsky bridgehead . The battalion commander was always on the coast and fearlessly led the operation to transfer troops to the right bank of the Dnieper . The width of the river at the crossing was about 700 meters. During the night, sappers transported more than 500 infantrymen, who, by morning, captured a part of the village of Zarubentsi with battle.

For the feat shown during the crossing of the Dnieper River and the firmly securing the bridgehead on the western bank of the Dnieper River, Major M. Morkovin, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of October 29, 1943, was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Three other subordinates of the battalion commander for the exploits shown during the crossing of the Dnieper on September 22-23, 1943, were also awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union (junior lieutenant I. B. Berkutov , junior sergeant V. I. Shumikhin , corporal S. I. Podkopaev ). After the Bukrinsky bridgehead, the battalion Morkovina masterfully crossed the Dnieper in yet another place - between Kiev and Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky .

In February 1944, Major Morkovin, with his sappers, took an active part in the liquidation of the group of Nazi troops surrounded near Korsun-Shevchenkovsky .

The March offensive of 1944 led the 337th SD of the 1st Ukrainian Front to the Southern Bug River , where the Nazis wanted to organize a new strategic defense line. On March 16, Major Morkovin was tasked with a group of the most experienced fighters of the battalion with a forced march, bypassing individual enemy garrisons, to go to the Southern Bug near the village of Gubnik in the Vinnitsa region and prepare a crossing for suitable regiments of the division. On March 17, before dawn, the first divisions of the division approached the Southern Bug , where the engineers of Morkovin were already launching rafts. The battalion commander himself participated in the first voyages, delivering infantry and light guns to the west bank. On one of these flights, enemy aircraft appeared and the commander’s raft was destroyed by a bomb explosion. Carrot was wounded, lost consciousness and began to sink. But the battalion commander, under the howling of falling bombs, was saved by his sappers.

From March to August 1944, Mikhail Morkovin was treated in a hospital. In August 1944, by order of the Marshal of Engineering Troops M.P. Vorobyov, Major Morkovin was submitted to enter the V.V. Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy and, after passing the entrance exams, became a student of this Academy.

Post-war time

• September 1944 - March 1950 - student of the Military Engineering Academy named after V.V. Kuybyshev;
• June 24, 1945 - participant of the Victory Parade on Red Square in Moscow (assistant to the Academy standard bearer);
• March 1950 - October 1957 - senior officer of the headquarters of the engineer troops of the Soviet army (lieutenant colonel);
• November 1957 - September 1959 - student of the Military Academy of the General Staff ;
• September 1959 - April 1968 - senior officer, head of the group, head of the department of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR (Colonel / Major General);
• April 1968 - January 1971 - deputy chief of department — chief engineer of the 9th Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Defense;
• January 1971 - June 1987 - Head of the 9th Central Administration of the USSR Ministry of Defense (Lieutenant General);
• after dismissal from the USSR Armed Forces in 1987 until December 1989 - Chief Expert of the State Expertise and Inspection of the USSR Ministry of Defense.

Lieutenant General M.V. Morkovin and his family lived in the hero city of Moscow. He died on December 14, 1989 . He was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow (plot No. 2).

• Gold Star Medal ;
• two orders of Lenin ;
• Order of the October Revolution ;
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor ;
• Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree;
• Order of the Red Star ;
• Order "For Service to the Homeland in the Armed Forces of the USSR" III degree;
• Order of the Badge of Honor ;
• five orders of foreign countries;
• honorary title " Honored Builder of the RSFSR ";
• Honorary citizen of the city of Lubny, Poltava region of Ukraine .

• The bas-relief and description of the feat on the Walk of Fame in the village of Krasnoye, Krasninsky District, Lipetsk Region.

• Glukhovsky S. D. Golden Star. - M .: Military Publishing, 1954. - S. 49-84.
• Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Brief Biographical Dictionary / Prev. ed. collegium I. N. Shkadov . - M .: Military Publishing , 1988. - T. 2 / Love - Yashchuk /. - 863 s. - 100,000 copies. - ISBN 5-203-00536-2 .
• Road-ways: A collection of memoirs of veterans of the 337th Infantry Division. - Terrible: Chechen-Ingush Prince. Publishing House, 1984.

• Mikhail Vasilievich Morkovin (Russian) . Site " Heroes of the country ".
• Award sheet .