Rank: Political Officer. Corps: Armored and mechanized troops. Lebedev Matvey Stepanovich was born in 1905 in a peasant family. Place of birth: the village of Doenkino, Makaryevsky district, Kostroma province (now Semenovsky district, Nizhny Novgorod region). His father worked as a rural paramedic, his mother was a peasant. From 1917 to 1920, he was engaged in the farm. From July 1920 to February 1921, he served in the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army as a walker of the 202nd Rifle Regiment in Belebey, Ufa province. From January 1923 to February 1925, he worked in a horticultural and livestock farm at the Kudma station, Nizhny Novgorod province. In 1924, he joined the Komsomol, from February 1925 until calling up to the Red Army he worked as a shepherd in the village of Gorevo, Varnavinsky district, Nizhny Novgorod province. From September 1927 to December 1929, Lebedev Matvey Stepanovich was a Red Army soldier, a private of the 5th Company, 1st Regiment of the Convoy Guard, then transferred to the 48th Rifle Division in Tver, where the future Marshal of the Soviet Union and outstanding military chief A. M. Vasilevsky served. On October 3, 1929, while serving in the Red Army, Lebedev was accepted into the party by the Party Commission of the 48th Rifle Division and became a member of the AUCP. From 1930 to 1931, he was a Chairman of the Settlement Association in the village of Ilino-Zaborskoe, Nizhny Novgorod province, an active participant in the formation of Soviet power in the village. Since January 1931, he was a cadet of the Regional Soviet Party School in Vyatka, (Kirov ) Nizhny Novgorod region. Since November 1931, he was a Chairman of the Seminsky village Council, Koverninsky district, Gorky region. Since August 1933, Matvey worked as a Chairman of the Naumovsky collective farm. From August 1934 he was an appointed head of the special unit of the District Executive Committee in the village of Kovernino, Nizhny Novgorod region. On June 22, 1941 the enemy treacherously attacked our Soviet Homeland. In 1942, Lebedev Matvey Stepanovich goes as a volunteer to the front of the Great Patriotic war, leaving his family at home: his wife, daughter and four sons. In September 1942, according to the Directive of the People’s Commissariat in the Gorky region, the 45th mechanized brigade was formed in the Balakhninsky district. M. S. Lebedev, is enlisted in this brigade as the political officer of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Battalion. The fate of my grandfather is inextricably linked with the 45th mechanized brigade. As part of the 45th Mechanized Brigade, political officer M. S. Lebedev passed his combat path from the Surovikino station, Stalingrad region, to Tatsinskaya station, Rostov region. On January 9, 1943 in a battle with German tanks, while repelling an enemy counterattack in the area of Krylov farm and Bobovnya farm, Rostov region, political officer of the 2nd Mechanized Battalion, 45th Mechanized Brigade, 5th Mechanized Corps, 5th Tank Army, South-Western front, Lebedev Matvey Stepanovich, died a heroic death. He was buried in a mass grave in Krylov farm, Tatsinsky district, Rostov region.