Konstantin Nikolaevich Leselidze

Born Oct. 2 (15), 1903, in the city of Makharadze; died Feb. 21, 1944, in Tbilisi. Soviet military commander; colonel general (1943); Hero of the Soviet Union (May 13, 1971). Member of the CPSU from 1925.

Leselidze entered the Soviet Army in 1921 and graduated from the Georgian Combined Military School in 1922 and from the advanced academic training courses for the command staff in 1929. In the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Leselidze served on the Western, Transcaucasian, and North Caucasian fronts as chief of the artillery of a rifle corps and an army (1941–42), commander of a rifle corps (1942), and commander of the Forty-sixth, Forty-seventh, and Eighteenth armies (1942–44). He participated in the Battle of Moscow and in battles for the Caucasus and the Right-bank Ukraine. Leselidze was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov First Class, the Order of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of Bogdan Khmel’nitskii, two Orders of the Red Star, and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR.