PLACE OF BIRTH: village of Nadezhdino (currently Yelnikovsky district), Mordovia DATE OF BIRTH: 11.10.1911. DATE OF DEATH: 29.01.1945. HISTORY: Rank: Lieutenant. Corps: Land forces, air force (except naval aviation), coast service, NKVD troops, border guard. Unit: 32nd Rifle Verkhnedneprovskaya Red Banner Order of Suvorov division. Mikhail Fedorovich Larin, one of three policemen, heroes of the Great Patriotic war, who was awarded of the rank the Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. He was born in 1911 in Mordovia, in the village of Nadezhdino (now Yelnikovsky district) in a peasant family. In 1923 Mikhail Larin graduated from four classes (according to some sources – six classes). In 1927-1933 he worked as a woodcutter and carrier in the Lukoyanovsky logging company. He was called up for military service in 1933. From 1933 to 1935 he served in the cavalry units of the Belarusian military district, first as a red army soldier, and then as a junior commander. In 1933, he entered the school of junior cavalry commanders, and he successfully completed it in 1934. After leaving the reserve, he came to live permanently in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) and entered the service of the internal affairs bodies. Mikhail Fedorovich met the war as an employee of the 8th police department of the Zhdanovsky district. From the first days of the war, he repeatedly appealed to the military enlistment office and to the leadership of the city police department to send him to the front. In September 1942 his insistent demands were met. A month later, he served in the active army as a machine gunner, and then as a commander of a machine gun platoon on the Kalinin, Western and 1st Baltic fronts. After the battle for Kursk, Mikhail Larin was treated in a hospital. At the end of 1942 he graduated from officer courses and returned to his regiment as a Second Lieutenant. During the battle for East Prussia, Mikhail Fedorovich was appointed commander of a machine-gun platoon of the 113th rifle regiment, the 32nd rifle division, the 19th rifle corps, the 4th shock army of the 1st Baltic front. Lieutenant Larin repeatedly showed personal courage, heroism, resourcefulness in the battles for the Motherland. By the beginning of 1945, he was already a holder of two orders of the Red Star, the Order of Glory, 3rd class and several medals. In January 1945, Lieutenant Mikhail Fedorovich Larin was killed in the battle for the Kurishe-Nerung spit (now the Curonian spit) of the Baltic sea. He was only 34 years old. On the night of January 28-29, 1945, Lieutenant Larin led one of the two assault detachments of the 113th rifle regiment, which was assigned the mission: from Memel (now - the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda), secretly cross the Kurisches-Haff Bay (now the Curonian lagoon) on the ice, capture the bridgehead on the Kurishe - Nerungi spit and hold it until the main forces of the division approach. The mission was completed: with a bold blow, the assault detachments captured the bridgehead, pushed the Nazis back from the road connecting the Konigsberg, Memel and Courland groups of troops. Mikhail Fedorovich was twice wounded in this heavy fight, but did not leave the battlefield. His soldiers repelled six counterattacks by the Nazis. Larin personally destroyed 15 fascists in this battle. The third wound, received on January 29, 1945, was fatal. He was buried in one of the mass graves of the Klaipeda, Lithuania. Mikhail Larin was awarded of the rank the Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously for this feat by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated April 19, 1945. In the post-war years, his name was not forgotten. In the hero's homeland in the village of Nadezhdino, a bust was erected in his memory. In Nizhny Novgorod, a street in the Prioksky district, where he used to serve in the police, is named after the Hero of the Soviet Union M. F. Larin. In Soviet times, three pioneer squads - 18, 151, and 154 schools was named after his name. On June 25, 1976, a ship named "Mikhail Fedorovich Larin"was launched from the slipways of the shipbuildingyard.