Mikhail Petrovich Petrov (Russian: Михаил Петрович Петров; 15 January 1898 – October/November 1941)[N 1] was a Red Army major general and a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Born to a peasant family, he moved to Petrograd and became a metalworker at the Putilov Plant, where he became a Red Guard squad leader and fought in the storming of the Winter Palace.

During the interwar period Petrov became an armored corps officer and fought as a tank battalion commander during the Spanish Civil War.

Petrov was born to a peasant family on 15 January 1898 in Zalustezhye, part of the Saint Petersburg Governorate.

[4][5] Around 1920, Petrov was transferred to Central Asia and fought in the suppression of the Basmachi movement, a Muslim uprising against Russian and Soviet rule.

Outnumbered, the 17th Mechanized Corps was unable to offer much resistance to the attack and its remnants retreated eastwards to the Berezina, where they linked up with other Soviet units.

[13] It suffered heavy losses in the fighting and on 5 July became part of the 21st Army after being ordered to move to Babruysk on the previous day.

[17][18] The 50th Army defended the Bryansk and Kaluga approaches, and conducted unsuccessful counterattacks against a German bridgehead on the Desna River.

[20] In early October, the army was surrounded during the Orel-Bryansk Defensive Operation, in an area known as the Bryansk Pocket.

[1] John Erickson states that he was wounded during the breakout and was hidden by his soldiers in a woodcutter's hut near Karachev, where he died of gangrene on 13 October.

Alexander concluded that his father had been shot through both hips during the breakout, taken to the village of Golynka and hidden in the house of the Novokreshchenovy family.

Novokreshchenov's wife reportedly threw an old coat over him when German troops searched the house, claiming he was her husband.