Matrosov was a private in the 2nd Separate Rifle Battalion of the 91st Independent Siberian Volunteer Brigade, later renamed and the 254th Rifle Regiment and reorganized within the 56th Guards Rifle Division of the Soviet Army. He was armed with a light machine-gun. On 23 and 24 February 1942, in the battle to recapture village of Chernushki, near Velikiye Luki, currently in Loknyansky District, Pskov Oblast, the Soviet forces struggled to take a German heavy machine-gun, housed within a concrete pillbox, which blocked the route to the village. It had already claimed the lives of many of the Red Army troops. Matrosov crept up to the pillbox and released a burst of rounds into the slot in the pillbox. One round hit a mine inside, and the machine-gun temporarily fell silent. It restarted a few minutes later. At this point Matrosov physically pulled himself up and jammed his body into the slot, wholly blocking the fire at his comrades but clearly at the cost of his own life. This allowed his unit to advance and capture the pillbox and thereafter retake the village. For his self-sacrifice in battle, Matrosov was posthumously awarded the distinction Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin. Stalin officially renamed his regiment the Matrosov Regiment. Although Alexander Matrosov became one of the most revered and celebrated Great Patriotic War heroes in the Soviet Union, it was never emphasised that he was actually of a Bashkir ethnic minority and his real name Shakiryan Muhammedyanov was Russified.
Similar cases
On August 6, 1942 in the battle on the riverDon an ethnic Kyrgyz soldier of the Red Army :ru:%D0%A2%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2, %D0%A7%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B9|Cholponbay Tuleberdiev similarly covered by his body a fascist Nazi pillbox machine-gun. According to Beijing People's Daily, Matrosov's tale also inspired Huang Jiguang, a famous Chinese revolutionary martyr, to perform a similar feat during the Korean War. During the Second Indochina War, in Battle of Dien Bien Phu. A Viet Minh soldier named Phan Dinh Giot bravely sacrificed his life to fill the machine gun bunker of the French army to create opportunities for teammates to advance.
