Rank: Lieutenant Colonel. Unit: 372nd Novgorod Red Banner Rifle Division. Ivan Bolotov was born in 1902 in the village of Novoselskoe. From here, in 1924, he was drafted into the Workers and Peasants Red Army, service in which became his profession. He met the war in the rank of a Major, and by May of 1942 he was already a Lieutenant Colonel, Commander of the 1238th Rifle Regiment of the 372nd Rifle Division. The date of his death is considered to be May 30, 1942. However, there is evidence that on the morning of May 31, when the Nazis closed the encirclement with a powerful blow, cutting off the 59th Army, as a result of which its 1238th and 1240th Regiments, along with the 2nd Shock Army, were in the so-called Volkhov cauldron, he was still in command of his unit. A lot has been written about what happened in the period from January to June 1942 in the area of the villages of Lyubino Polye and Myasnoy Bor in the present Novgorod Region. Military men and historians still argue about the reasons for the unsuccessful counteroffensive designed to break the blockade of Leningrad, which was dying of hunger and cold. The scale of the tragedy is illustrated by at least this figure: more than 37 thousand people were buried at the Myasnoy Bor and Lyubino Pole memorials. They were found in the area surrounded by search teams, starting from 1986. Only a few people came out of the Bolotov’s regiment to join their own, but they could not say anything definite about the fate of their commander. There were many versions of what happened to Bolotov: from death to capture and treason. Each of them was quite real. After all, in the same Volkhov cauldron was the Commander of the 2nd Shock Army Vlasov, whose name later became synonymous with betrayal. General Vlasov led the "Russian Liberation Army" (ROA) created by the Nazis, and there were many "Volkhov" soldiers and officers in the ranks of the Vlasovites. So finding the remains of Bolotov helped - not just set the place of death of the regiment commander. It confirmed that our countryman remained faithful to the oath of defender of the Motherland until the end of his life, preferring death to captivity. The Lieutenant Colonel's medallion was found in 1996 by the search team from Nizhnekamsk. The birch grove on the Bank of the Polist River in the "island" area is still a giant mass grave of Soviet soldiers. Here, every year, the remains of hundreds of people are brought to the surface with a shovel and brush. A decade and a half ago, one didn't even have to dig the ground. Almost all the dead were not buried and rose directly from the surface, less often - from artillery craters. On the side of one of these craters the remains of Ivan Bolotov were found. His ashes were buried on August 30, 1996 at the Myasnoy Bor memorial near the village of the same name in the Novgorod Region. It is known that the Bolotov’s family at the time of war lived in the city of Suchan, Primorsky Region, but Ivan's relatives remained in Novogolsky. There is information that in 2008, his nephew was looking for him.