Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev was born in the town of Shamakhi, Baku Governorate, in 1891. In 1900, Gurtyev’s large family moved to the Baltics. Leonty Gurtyev studied at a real school in the city of Panevėžys, entered the Kharkiv Institute of Technology, and a year later transferred to the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. Gurtyev was arrested for participating in a demonstration.
After three months of imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress, Leonty Gurtyev was drafted into the imperial army. In its ranks, he went through the First World War, as well as several prisoner-of-war camps. Due to the Aster Revolution in Hungary, Gurtyev was released, as well as many other prisoners. He returned home to Russia that had radically transformed.
For a short time, Gurtyev worked as a technician in Kovrov, where his relatives moved, but in 1919 he joined the Red Army. As a Red Army soldier, he took part in the Russian Civil War, and held the positions of battalion commander, regiment, and division chief of staff.
In 1936, Gurtyev was appointed assistant to the chief of the Omsk Infantry School, which he then headed. In March 1942, Leonty Gurtyev went to the front. He led the 308th Infantry Division, which he himself formed on the basis of the Omsk Infantry School.
The first battles of Gurtyev’s division took place near Stalingrad. Within a month, Soviet soldiers and officers under his command destroyed about twenty thousand enemy soldiers, 143 tanks, about 100 artillery and mortar batteries, 37 anti-tank guns, several aircraft, and 41 heavy machine guns. An order was issued to award the 308th Rifle Division with the Order of the Red Banner, and its commander, Colonel Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev, was awarded the rank of Major General.
The 308th Red Banner Rifle Division also distinguished itself during the Soviet counteroffensive on the Kursk salient. A detachment broke through the enemy’s defenses near the village of Izmailovo. On August 3, 1943, during Operation Kutuzov (part of the Oryol strategic offensive), General Gurtyev died protecting with his own body the commander of the 3rd Army Alexander Vasilyevich Gorbatov.
The Oryol Military
History Museum presents a copy of the photograph of Leonty Gurtyev taken in the
first half of the 1940s.
