Alexei Arapov

Drafted into the Red Army in 1928, Arapov became an officer and graduated from the Frunze Military Academy soon after the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Serving as a staff officer in the 50th Army during the Battle of Moscow, Arapov distinguished himself and when the 8th Airborne Corps was formed in the fall of 1942, he became its chief of staff. The corps was soon converted into the 3rd Guards Airborne Division, and Arapov stayed on as chief of staff for the new division. Killed in a German air raid during the Battle of the Dnieper, he was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his actions.

Early life Alexei Arapov was born on 14 March 1906 in Verkh-Neyvinsky in the Yekaterinburgsky Uyezd of the Perm Governorate of the Russian Empire in the family of a miner and graduated from eighth grade. In 1922 he began working as a peat miner, and then became an apprentice turner at the Verkh-Neyvinsky ironworks. In 1924 he became a turner at the emerald mines of the trust "Russkiye samotsvety" (Russian Gems) near the station of Bazhenovo. In October Arapov moved to Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), where he successively worked as a laborer, a stonecutter, and a clerk in the trust "Uralkhleboprodukt" (Ural Bakeries). In February 1927, he moved to the Donbas, where he worked in a coal mine of the trust "Donugol" as a technical secretary, messenger, and coal cutter operator.

Interwar military service Arapov was drafted into the Red Army in November 1928. Initially serving with the 13th Corps Sapper Battalion at Kazan, he entered the Vladikavkaz (Ordzhonikidze from 1931) Infantry School in November 1929. While at the school, Arapov participated in the crushing of a Chechen uprising against collectivization in 1930 and in the same year became a member of the Communist Party. Arapov graduated from the Ordzhonikidze Infantry School in 1931 and became a machine gun platoon commander in the 9th Don Rifle Division's 25th Rifle Regiment at Novocherkassk. In 1932, he married Nadezhda Ignateyevna Lukovoy.

A school in Verkh-Neyvinsky is named after Arapov.

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