Petrova Nina Pavlovna - Soviet soldier, sniper. Participant of the Soviet-Finnish and World War II. She was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War and the Order of Glory three times.
Biography
Nina Pavlovna was born in July 1893 on the twenty-seventh in the city of Oranienbaum (now the city of Lomonosov). A few years after the birth of their daughter, the Petrov family moved to St. Petersburg. Nina's father fell seriously ill and died, her mother was left alone with five children. This event forced Nina, after graduating from the fifth grade, to enter a trade school in order to start working as early as possible. After three years of study, she left for Vladivostok to stay with her relatives, already there she got a job as an accountant.
In 1927, Nina and her daughter returned to Leningrad, where she got a job as a physical education teacher and bullet shooting instructor. She herself was actively involved in sports and participated in various competitions.
Petrova's sports career developed extremely successfully, at the 1934 Spartakiad she won several prizes at once, and also one of the first received the TRP badge of the first degree in the city of Leningrad.
Military service
In the midst of World War II, the Soviet Union unleashed a war with Finland. Petrova, as an experienced and skillful shooter, took part in it. In 1941, the Great Patriotic War began, at that time Nina was already forty-eight years old and she did not fall under the draft. Nevertheless, she made the decision to voluntarily go to the front and defend her native land from the Nazi invaders.
Nina Pavlovna's service began in the volunteer militia of the city of Leningrad, where she also helped doctors treat the wounded. In the fall of the same year, she was assigned to the 284th Infantry Regiment, where she became a sniper. Near Leningrad, she not only participated in battles and personally hit enemy soldiers, but also actively taught new snipers. For the entire period of the war, she personally trained about five hundred professionals. After the Leningrad battles, Petrova was immediately nominated for two awards: "For Military Merit" and "For the Defense of Leningrad".
In total, during the war years, Nina Pavlovna made a huge contribution to the victory, she killed more than 120 Nazis, and also took three prisoners. Unfortunately, Petrova did not live to see victory for only a few days. She died in early May. On the first day, the car of mortarmen, on which Nina Pavlovna was traveling, turned over and fell off a cliff, all who were in the car were killed. In June 1945, Petrova was posthumously awarded the First Degree Order of Glory.
Awards and memory
During her entire service at the front, Pavlova was awarded the Order of Glory of three degrees. In April 1945 she was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War. In March, she was also awarded a personalized sniper "three-line". The rifle is currently in the Museum of Military Glory. In the late seventies, in memory of the famous woman, a postal envelope with a portrait of Nina Petrovna was issued.
