The direct ancestor of the Division was the Red Army's 17th Tank Corps, initially formed in Stalingrad in 1942 shortly after the 1941 start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II.

[10] The Corps received the honorific Kantemirovskaya after the village of Kantemirovka in Kantemirovsky District, Voronezh Oblast, which its tank sub-units liberated from German occupation in their baptism of fire.

In August 1943, the 4th Guards Tank Corps conducted continuous combat operations on the Belgorod-Kharkiv sector of the Kursk Bulge.

For the courage and heroism shown during the liberation of cities in right-bank Ukraine, including Zbarazh, Ternopil, and Shepetovka in April 1944, the Corps was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Seventeen regiments and separate battalions were awarded honorifics of Shepetovsky, Zhitomirsky, Yampolsky, and Tarnopolsky, in honor of the cities they had taken.

The corps was among the first Red Army formations to reach the river Elbe and participate in the capture of Dresden in Germany.

In early 2006, the division's 13th Tank Regiment participated, along with other 20th Guards Army units, in the joint Russian–Belarusian "Shield of Union" military exercises.

During the opening hours, the division failed to isolate the city, which was later criticized by western intelligence officers as "hesitant and amateurish."

[18][19][20][21] Following the failure to capture Kharkiv, 1st Guards Tank Army commander General-Lieutenant Sergey Kiel was suspended.

[26][27] On 13 May 2022, the division became the first Russian formation to be individually singled out as having allegedly committed war crimes in the invasion.

[28][29] By September 2022, the division, while deployed as part of the 1st Guards Tank Army, despite not having fully reconstituted during its rest and refit, was hit by the Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive.

At the beginning of the counteroffensive, the Ukrainian 4th Tank Brigade attempted to encircle 4th Guards Tank Division units outside of Izium, leading the division to retreat east across the Oskil River towards Lyman, lacking almost all of its heavy equipment and vehicles.

[43] The division participates in both the ground and mobile columns of the Moscow Victory Day Parade on Red Square, representing the forces of the Western Military District in the former.

[11] The unit's participation in the three-hour Tankmen Day parade in 1946 was decreed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

It makes limited use of the BTR-80 and MT-LB armoured personnel carriers, as well as the 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled artillery system, BM-21 Grad, and BM-27 "Uragan" MLRS.

The division's motor rifle regiment is equipped with a mix of T-80BVs and the upgraded T-80BVMs which it began to receive in company-sized batches in 2020.

[48] Equipment Summary* Media related to 4th Guards Tank Division at Wikimedia Commons