Matvey Kuzmin-Forgotten WWII Hero

Not everyone that made a difference were young and armed, sometimes it was the ordinary folks who contributed greatly to the war efforts and they did it unarmed, as was the case with Matvey Kuzmin, an 83 year old Russian farmer.

Matvey Kuzmich Kuzmin (3 August 1858–14 February 1942) was a Russian peasant who was killed in World War II. He was posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union on May 8, 1965, becoming the oldest person named a Hero of the Soviet Union based on his age at death.

Kuzmin was born in 1858 in the village of Kurakino, in the Velikoluksky District (then Uezd) of Pskov Oblast. He was a self-employed farmer who declined the offer to join a kolkhoz or collective farm. He lived with his grandson and continued to hunt and fish on the territory of the kolkhoz “Rassvet”  He was nicknamed “Biriuk” (lone…