History
The Ural Military district was formed on 4 May 1918[2] on the territory that included the Perm, Ufa, Orenburg, Vyatka and Kazan (until July 1918) Provinces.[3][4][5] The Headquarters (District Military Commissariat) was located in Yekaterinburg.
From the summer of 1918, the district became a battleground of the Civil War. Most of the territory of the district was occupied by White forces; Vyatka Province and part of Perm Province remained under the control of the Reds. The district administration was evacuated to Perm, then to Vyatka and from there to Penza. The district itself from the beginning of 1919 was subordinate to the commander of the 3rd Army, from April to November 1919 – to the commander of the Eastern Front. After the expulsion of the armies of Alexander Kolchak from the territory of the district in October 1919, the headquarters returned to Yekaterinburg. In October–November 1919, the district temporarily included Omsk, Tobolsk and Chelyabinsk Provinces. In April 1920, the Tyumen Province was transferred to the district (in May, it was transferred to the West Siberian Military District, in February 1921, it was returned to the Urals Military District), in March 1921 – the Bashkir Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic, in May 1921 – the North Dvina Province.[6]
On 3 October 1919, the district was renamed into Priuralsky, and in 1922, it was disbanded. The territory became part of, and the troops were transferred to the West Siberian, Volga, Moscow and Petrograd Military Districts.
On 17 May 1935, the Ural Military District was again created as part of the Kirov Territory, the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions, the Bashkir and Udmurt Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic.[1] The district headquarters and directorates were located in Sverdlovsk. By 1941, the territory of the district included the Sverdlovsk, Molotovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kustanai Regions and the western part of the Omsk Region.[1]
The Great Patriotic War occupies a special place in the history of the Ural Military District.[clarification needed]
In June 1941, the 22nd Army was formed on the basis of the Ural Military District and then redeployed to the Western Special Military District, which became the Western Front with the beginning of the war. Prewar Ural Military District commander Lieutenant general Filipp Yershakov was appointed commander of the army.
And already on 26 June 1941, individual units of the 22nd Army entered defensive battles in Belarus. On 7 July, the army entered into contact with the German fascist troops along the entire defense zone.
Then, until the end of August 1941, army units stubbornly held the defensive lines in the area of the city of Velikiye Luki, pinning down large enemy forces and making it possible to deploy strategic reserves on the approaches to Moscow.
During the war years, over a hundred military educational institutions were deployed on the territory of the district, which trained a significant part of the command personnel of the active army for the front.
There were formed, trained and sent to the front more than 1,5 thousand formations, formations and units.
In the pre–war years, a number of divisions were formed in the district, which showed themselves in battles with Nazi troops.
At the beginning of November 1939, the formation with the headquarters in Perm of the 112th Rifle Division ended.[7] In June 1941, the division became part of the formed 22nd Army. And in mid–June 1941, the 22nd Army, including the 112th Rifle Division, began to be redeployed to the Western Special Military District.
With the beginning of the war, the 112th Infantry Division took up defensive positions along the right bank of the Western Dvina River from Kraslava (Latvia) to Drissa (Belarus).
The division entered into battle with German troops on 26 June 1941. The city of Kraslava passed from hand to hand three times. The intensity of the fighting is evidenced by the fact that in these battles, the division's fighters destroyed the first German general since the beginning of the war on the entire Soviet–German front.[8]
Then there were defensive battles in the north of Belarus, in the area of the Polotsk Fortified Region and near Nevel.[9]
At Nevel, the division was completely surrounded; less than 1/3 of the personnel managed to get out.
The 112th Rifle Division, occupying a defensive zone on the right flank of the Western Front, held back the onslaught of superior enemy forces for more than three weeks.
In 1940, the 153rd Infantry Division was created – later one of the first guards divisions in the country. It entered into a battle with the Nazi invaders on 5 July 1941 near the city of Vitebsk. Covering the city from the west, it held the front for 7 days in a 40 km wide area. The Germans of the 39th Motorized Corps repeatedly offered the personnel of the division and personally to the commander, Colonel Nikolai Gagen, an ethnic German, to surrender. However, the division kept the occupied line, and retreated only when, having broken through the defenses of neighboring units on the right and left, the enemy bypassed it from the flanks with large forces of infantry and tanks, and the division ran out of ammunition and weapons. The division left the encirclement on 5 August 1941.
The division participated in the Yelninsky Operation (30 August – 6 September 1941) and for military exploits, organization, discipline and approximate order on 18 September 1941, the 153rd Rifle Division was transformed into the 3rd Guards Rifle Division. Subsequently, it participated in the Defense of Leningrad, the Sinyavin Operation, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Donbass Strategic Offensive Operation (for the capture of the settlement of Volnovakha, it was awarded the honorary name "Volnovakhskaya"), the Melitopol and Crimean Strategic Operations, the Liberation of Sevastopol, the Shauliai and Mamel Strategic Offensive and East Prussian Operations. Awarded with the Orders of the Red Banner and Suvorov.
The 61st, 62nd, 63rd, 64th and 65th Naval Rifle Brigades were formed in the district after a November–December 1941 People's Commissariat for Defence resolution.[10]
In 1943, the 30th Ural Volunteer Tank Corps, consisting of three tank brigades, was formed on the territory of the district. The corps also included the 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade and a number of separate units and subunits. Subsequently, the corps for differences in battles was renamed the 10th Guards Ural–Lvov Volunteer Tank Corps.[11]
In April 1945, two Ural formations – the 150th Rifle Division (Major general Vasily Shatilov) and the 171st Rifle Division (commander – Colonel Alexei Negoda) – were the first to break through to the Reichstag. The Victory Banner over the dome of the Reichstag was hoisted by the scouts of the 756th Regiment of the 150th Infantry Division Sergeants Mikhail Yegorov and Meliton Kantaria.
Almost all the Ural formations and units sent to the active army during the Great Patriotic War were awarded honorary titles, honorary titles and orders.
In the post–war years, the structure of the district has changed several times. In 1945, along with Privozhsky and Uralsky, the Kazan Military District was also created in the region as part of the Tatar, Udmurt, Mari and Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, but in 1946 it was disbanded.
The 4th Independent Air Defense Army of the Soviet Air Defence Forces on 1 May 1960, in the skies over Sverdlovsk, shot down an American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance spy plane of the United States Air Force being piloted by Francis Powers.
On 15 January 1974, by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Ural Military District was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for its great contribution to strengthening the country's defense power and its armed defense.[12]
By 1983, the Ural Military District included the territories of the Sverdlovsk, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Kirov Regions, Komi and the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.[1] The district headquarters was in Sverdlovsk. In 1989, the Ural Military District was merged with the Volga Military District into the Volga–Ural Military District.
In 1992, the Ural Military District was re–formed, which included the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan and Tyumen Regions, Khanty–Mansi and Yamalo–Nenets Autonomous Districts, removed from the Siberian Military District.
In 2001, the Ural Military District was again merged with the Volga Military District into the Volga–Ural Military District.
