Oleg Anikanov

Oleg Karpovich Anikanov (; 19 July 1933 – 24 April 2021) was an officer of the Soviet and later Russian navies. Over his career he reached the rank of general-polkovnik, equivalent to colonel general, and served as head of the navy's Main Engineering Directorate, and as deputy commander-in-chief of the Navy for construction, engineering support and maintenance.

Entering the Soviet Armed Forces after graduating with a speciality in engineering and construction in 1956, Anikanov spent his career in the navy, working on construction projects in and around the navy's many bases. His early service was with the Northern Fleet, where he worked on the new facilities required by the early generations of nuclear submarines then entering service. For his successes in this field, which included the first dry dock complexes in the USSR for nuclear submarines, he was awarded the Order of Lenin. He was later chief engineer of the military component of the , deputy chief of Severovoenmorstroy, and had responsibility for construction with the Baltic and Northern Fleets. He reached his highest positions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with responsibility for supervising the construction of naval bases in Cam Ranh in Vietnam, and Tartus, in Syria. He retired in 1993, but remained active in construction and engineering projects, as well as naval alumni associations, before his death in 2021.

Naval career Anikanov was born into a working-class family on 19 July 1933 in Moscow, then part of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federative Republic, in the Soviet Union. He attended the V. V. Kuibyshev Far Eastern Polytechnic Institute, enrolling in the naval faculty in 1951, and graduating with a degree in military and civil engineering in 1956. He entered the Soviet Armed Forces that year. Between 1956 and 1966 he advanced through the positions of foreman, head of a construction site, and then head of the construction department of the , part of the Northern Fleet. In this role he supervised the construction of the first dry dock complexes in the USSR for maintaining and repairing nuclear submarines. For this achievement he was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1965. Over the course of his career he had received numerous awards and honours. Among them were the Order of Lenin, awarded in 1965, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, Order "For Service to the Homeland in the Armed Forces of the USSR" Third Class, and the Medal "For Impeccable Service" in all three classes.