Petrova Nina Pavlovna - Soviet soldier, sniper. Member of the Soviet-Finnish and World War II. She was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War and three times the Order of Glory.
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 a 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 to enter a trading school after finishing the fifth grade in order to start working as early as possible. After three years of training, she left for relatives in Vladivostok, already there she got a job as an accountant.
In 1927, Nina with her daughter returned to Leningrad, where she got a job as a physical education teacher and a 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 sports and athletics meeting, she won several prizes at once, and one of the first received the TRP sign of the first degree in the city of Leningrad.
Military service
In the midst of World War II, the Soviet Union launched a war with Finland. Petrova, as an experienced and skilled shooter, took part in it. In 1941 the Great Patriotic War began, at that time Nina was already forty-eight years old and did not fall under the draft. Nevertheless, she decided to voluntarily go to the front and defend her native land from the Nazi invaders.
The service of Nina Pavlovna began in the voluntary militia of the city of Leningrad, where he helped doctors treat the wounded. In the autumn of that year, she was assigned to the 284 rifle regiment where she became a sniper. Near Leningrad, she not only participated in the battles and personally hit the enemy soldiers, but also actively taught new snipers. Over the entire period of the war, she personally trained about five hundred professionals. After the Leningrad battles, Petrova was presented immediately 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 captured three. Unfortunately, Petrova did not live to see victory for just a few days. In early May, she died. On the first day, the mortar machine that Nina Pavlovna was riding on turned over and fell off a cliff, all who were in the car died. In June 1945, Petrov was awarded posthumously the Order of Glory of the first degree.
