Pyotr Solodukhin

Pyotr Andrianovich Solodukhin (; 24 January 1892 – 8 August 1920) was a Russian military figure and Bolshevik division commander in the Russian Civil War. He joined the Red Army after having previously fought in the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War. One of the early recipients of the Order of the Red Banner, he saw action against Allied interventionists in the north, the forces of White generals Nikolai Yudenich around Petrograd, and Anton Denikin in the south, and was killed in action fighting against troops of Pyotr Wrangel at the Kakhovka bridgehead in August 1920.

Early life and commands Solodukhin was born on 24 January 1892 in the village of , in what was then Samara Governorate, in the Russian Empire. His mother, Matryona Andrianovna, died after being shot, with his father, Andrian Antonovich, dying not long after. Orphaned at a young age, he completed his studies at the Vasilyevsky parochial school, and at the Samara railway school, and went to work in Ufa Governorate. The Red Army strategy aimed to cut off the White forces from their sources of supply in the Crimea. On 6 August 1920 Solodukhin received orders to take his division across to the left bank of the Dnieper under cover of night. Solodukhin chose a place between the settlements of and to make the crossing. Simultaneously the 52nd and Latvian divisions were to cross the Dnieper in the area of Beryslav, and the Kherson group in the area of Kherson. Solodukhin's division was tasked with capturing the Korsun Monastery, fortified by White forces, the 52nd and the Latvian divisions were to capture Malaya and Bolshaya Kakhovka, and the Kherson group the village of Aleshki. If successful, this would open the way for the Red Army's Pravoberezhnaya group to advance on Perekop and Melitopol to join up with elements of 13th Army, and cut Wrangel's forces off from its Crimean bases. When later captured and interrogated, some of the White force involved in the battle reported Among the wounded was one of yours with the Order of the Red Banner. He was wounded in the leg and both arms. To the offer of the lieutenant to surrender, he replied: "We, the Communists, do not surrender to the mercy of the White Guard bastards!" Immediately one of the officers shot him at point-blank range. His commissar in the 9th Rifle Division, Semyon Voskov, is also buried at the monument, having died of typhus in Taganrog after that city had been taken by the Red Army.

Awards and honours A street in the urban-type settlement of Bezenchuk, in Solodukhin's home region of the Bezenchuksky District, is named after him.