Mikhail Ivanovich Proskuryakov Mikhail Ivanovich Proskuryakov (home front worker) Mikhail Ivanovich Proskuryakov was born on 3 November 1931 in the village of Treschevka, Voronezh Region. He graduated from 10th grade, then studied to be a locksmith. Mikhail was the youngest of four sons in the family. During the war, the Proskuryakovs' family lived in the occupied territory for a long seven months. On the orders of German officers, they had to leave their home and share shelter with other families. But the hardest thing to do was to accept the ferocity of the "Vlasovites" (members of the Russian Liberation Army who fought on the side of the Third Reich against the USSR) who were in the Voronezh region at the time. Children worked in the fields on a par with adults from dawn to dusk in order not to starve. "There was no equipment. They ploughed on cows. They came home late at night, very tired, they wanted to lie down and fall asleep tightly," Mikhail recalls. During the war Mikhail and his family experienced the bitterness of losing one of his brothers. In the post-war period, Mikhail Ivanovich worked as a baker and a ploughman. He always treated his work diligently and carefully. Repeatedly he was rewarded for his work. In 1960, Mikhail Ivanovich got a family, moved to the town of Balakovo in the Saratov region. He lived with his wife Anna Andreyevna for over 30 years and brought up his son.