Meliton Kantaria

Meliton Kantaria
Native name	მელიტონ ვარლამის ძე ქანთარია
Born	5 October 1920 Jvari, Georgia
Died	27 December 1993(1993-12-27) (aged 73) Moscow, Russia
Allegiance	Soviet Union
Service / branch	Red Army
Years of service	1940–1946
Rank	Junior sergeant
Unit	150th Rifle Division
Battles / wars	World War II
Awards	Hero of the Soviet Union

Meliton Varlamis dze Kantaria or Kantariya (Georgian: მელიტონ ქანთარია, Template:Lang-ru; 5 October 1920 – 27 December 1993), Hero of the Soviet Union (8 May 1946), was a Georgian sergeant of the Soviet Army credited to have hoisted a Soviet flag over the Reichstag on 30 April 1945, together with Mikhail Yegorov and Alexei Berest.

Biography

Born to a peasant family in a small Georgian town of Jvari, he worked in a kolkhoz until being mobilized in the Red Army in 1940. During World War II, he served in the 756th Rifle Regiment, 150th Rifle Division, of the 3rd Shock Army at the 1st Belorussian Front. He is credited for having mounted a red banner, together with Sergeant M.A. Yegorov, over the Reichstag on 1 May 1945.

Demobilized in 1946, he lived thereafter in Sukhumi working as a governmental shop manager. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1947. A year after the secessionist war in Abkhazia started, he moved with his family to Moscow where he died two months later in December 1993 in a Moscow hospital.

Meliton Kantaria House in Ochamchire, destroyed during the fighting

Honours and awards

• Hero of the Soviet Union
• Order of Lenin
• Order of the Red Banner
• Order of the Patriotic War 1st class
• campaign and jubilee medals

See also

• Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
• Mikhail Minin - according to later researches, the first flag raiser over the Reichstag

External links

• More details about the Banner of Victory at http://www.crwflags.com
• Meliton Varlamovich Kantaria (in Russian)