Ivan Nikolaevich Kulbertinov (Russian: Иван Николаевич Кульбертинов; Yakut: Ньукулай уола Уйбаан Кульбертинов, romanized: Ņukulay uola Uybân Kulbertinov; 7 November 1917 — 13 February 1993) was a Soviet sniper of World War II with a tally of 487 kills.[a][1][2]
Early life
Kulbertinov was born on 7 November, 1917 in Tyanya in the present-day Sakha Republic to an Evenk family of reindeer herders, who hunted wildlife in the taiga of Olyokminsky District. His father Nikolai Romanovich Kulbertinov died when he was ten and his mother Anna Vasilievna was often sick due to chronic illness. For most of his teenage years, Kulbertinov worked on the Novaya Zhizn collective farm in Tsivilsky District, Chuvash Republic, for which he was recognised as a Stakhanovite. His older brother Nikolai was killed while serving on the Eastern Front in 1939.
Wehrmacht troops in Mukachevo nicknamed him "Kulbert" while those in the Eastern Carpathians referred to Kulbertinov by the epithets "Siberian Midnight"( German: Sibirische Mitternacht) or "Siberian Owl" (German: Sibirische Eule). In the community of his home, he was given the honorific name "buskhaa", meaning "mighty" in the Evenki language.
Post-war
In 1946, Kulbertinov was demobilized in Irkutsk. While there, he was involved in a shooting incident, when two drunk Red Army officers approached Kulbertinov while he was eating and accused him of stolen valor, derogatorily calling him a Chukchi. Kulbertinov wounded both men with his Tokarev sidearm. He was arrested and tried shortly after, but released less than a year later in 1947. Kulbertinov was returned to Tyanya and from 1948 to 1969, he worked as a hunter for the state-run silver fox farm while also setting up traps to deter wolves from a deer husbandry site.
Kulbertinov was the recipient of 12 medals, as well as a personalized Mosin–Nagant rifle from the Military Council of the Red Army. He was also twice considered for Hero of the Soviet Union, but ultimately did not receive the award.
Footnotes
^Some modern sources indicate a tally as high of 487 kills, although his award documents indicate a tally of 252