Yakov Pavlov
Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov was a Soviet Red Army soldier who became a Soviet Union">Soviet Union">Soviet Union for his role in defending the eponymous "Pavlov's House" during the Battle of Stalingrad.
Early life
Pavlov was born in 1917 to a peasant family in the small village of Krestovaya in northwestern Russia.Military career
Pavlov joined the Red Army in 1938. During World War II, he fought on the Southwestern, Stalingrad, 3rd Ukrainian and 2nd Belorussian fronts. Pavlov was a commander of a machine gun unit, an artilleryman, and a commander of a reconnaissance unit with the rank of senior sergeant.During the Battle of Stalingrad, on the night of 27 September 1942, Pavlov's platoon recaptured a four-story residential building from the German Army, and defended it against continual attack by the Germans until relieved by advancing Soviet forces two months later. Vasily Chuikov, commanding general of the Soviet forces in Stalingrad, claimed that the Germans lost more men trying to take Pavlov's House than they did taking Paris.