Nikolai Vedeneyev

Nikolai Denisovich Vedeneyev (Russian: Николай Денисович Веденеев; 28 March 1897 – 16 November 1964) was a Soviet Army lieutenant general and a Hero of the Soviet Union. Vedeneyev was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army and fought in World War I as a non-commissioned officer. He became a Red Guard and became a partisan on the Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War. Vedeneyev joined the Red Army and became a Political commissar. He held posts in cavalry units during the interwar period and later served in mechanized units. In 1938 he became chief of the commanders' improvement courses at the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization. Vedeneyev became chief of staff and deputy commander of the 6th Mechanized Corps in 1940, and then was deputy commander of the 20th Mechanized Corps.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the corps was encircled in the Siege of Mogilev. Vedeneyev escaped the encirclement and later became head of the faculty at the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization. In April 1944 he returned to the front as the deputy commander of the 8th Guards Tank Corps. Vedeneyev took command of the 3rd Tank Corps, which became the 9th Guards Tank Corps. For his leadership of the corps in the Vistula–Oder Offensive, Vedeneyev received the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Postwar, he became head of combat training of the Soviet Army Armored and Mechanized Forces. In 1947, Vedeneyev again became head of the faculty at the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization, retiring in 1951.