Workers of the Kuibyshev Tram Park who died at the front during the Great Patriotic War, and their memorialization

When we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, it seems especially relevant to address the topic of preserving the memory of the fallen heroes. This article attempts to reconstruct the fate of the workers of the Kuibyshev tram fleet who died at the front during the Great Patriotic War. The years of their lives, the branch of the armed forces and the units in which the tram fleet workers fought, the awards to which they were presented, the front-line paths, as well as the essence and nature of their exploits and the context of their deaths are established. If it was indicated in the documents, then we give the names of the mothers or wives who were waiting for the dead soldiers in Kuibyshev. The article also analyzes the process of memorializing the memory of the heroes of the front, which resulted in the construction of a memorial stele, and later the organization of a memorial to the deceased employees on the territory of the enterprise. The research was based on the published materials of the multi-volume Book of Memory of the Samara Region and documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which were scanned and posted in the information system «Memory of the People».