On the day the German Operation Barbarossa began, 22 June 1941, the division was in field camps at the Kushchuba training center, 50 km from Vologda.

Under enemy fire, elements of the division unloaded at the Pskov, Cherskaya, and Ostrov stations and moved directly from the railway into battle.

314/3/0159 dated 4 January 1992, the 173rd Guards District Training Centre was to be separated,[2] and weapons and military equipment removed.

[22] When the division was disbanded in April 1992, 44 MT-LBs, 57,000 small arms, and 27 wagons of ammunition were transferred to the Chechen Republic.

[citation needed] Following the beginning of the Second Chechen War, the division was designated in December 1999 as the permanent garrison force for Chechnya, and various military districts started raising their regiments separately in 2000.

Its headquarters was established at Khankala outside Groznyy, with the 71st Motor Rifle Regiment also at the same base; the 71st MRR was raised in the Volga Military District.

The 72nd MRR, raised from the 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division in the Moscow Military District, was established at Kalinovskaya.

[24] On 1 July 2000, Deputy Defence Minister Colonel-General Aleksandr Kosovan (ru:Косован, Александр Давыдович) said that the MOD had decided on the area of the Borzoy settlement instead of the planned Itum-Kale for the 42nd Division’s motor rifle regiment.

The writer Michael Orr noted that the 291st Motor Rifle Regiment had been relocated 'when the tactical vulnerability of the position [originally Itum-Kale] was appreciated.

The 42nd Division included two Chechen battalions, Vostok-Akhmat and Zapad-Akhmat, volunteer formations raised by Ramzan Kadyrov in late June 2022.