Kizhevatov Street was named in 1981 in honor of the participant in the defense of the Brest Fortress, Hero of the Soviet Union Andrey Mitrofanovich Kizhevatov.
Andrey Kizhevatov was born on August 18 (31), 1907, in the village of Seliksa (now the village of Kizhevatovo in the Bessonovsky District of the Penza Region). He was the son of a peasant.
He served in the Red Army from 1929. After graduating from the junior command school of the 7th separate artillery division, in 1930 he became a gun commander in the separate cavalry division of the Belarusian border district. From November 1932, he was on extended service, serving at the Kukovitskaya outpost of the Timkovich border detachment, rising by May 1938 to the position of assistant chief of the border outpost.
In 1939, Kizhevatov was awarded the rank of "junior lieutenant," and in September of the same year, he was appointed acting chief of the border outpost in Brest. On July 17, 1940, he was appointed chief of the 9th border outpost of the 17th Brest border detachment, located in the Brest Fortress. On February 25, 1941, he was promoted to the rank of "lieutenant."
On June 22, 1941, Lieutenant A. M. Kizhevatov led the defense of the outpost and was wounded for the first time. On June 23, when only ruins remained of the outpost building, he and his fighters moved to the basements of the nearby barracks of the 333rd Rifle Regiment, where a group of soldiers under the command of Senior Lieutenant A. E. Potapov was fighting. In the following days, he continued to co-lead the defense of the 333rd regiment’s barracks and the Terespol gates together with Potapov. On June 29, when ammunition was almost exhausted, a decision was made to make one last desperate attempt to break through. Potapov led the breakthrough group, while 17 wounded soldiers led by the already seriously wounded Lieutenant Kizhevatov remained to cover the fortress. Lieutenant Kizhevatov died in this battle. The breakthrough also ended in failure — most of its participants were killed or captured.
There is another version of A. M. Kizhevatov’s last battle. In S. S. Smirnov’s book "Brest Fortress," there are the following lines:
“... In the first days of July, Senior Lieutenant Potapov entrusted Kizhevatov with a dangerous and responsible mission — to blow up the pontoon bridge over the Bug River, laid by the enemy near the fortress. They left, and it remains unknown to this day whether this bold sabotage succeeded. The details of the hero-border guard’s death also remain unknown.”
Andrey Mitrofanovich Kizhevatov was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union in 1965.
